


On Shifting Ground

by littl_prince



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Confrontations, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends, Fluff, Gen, Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter), POV Sirius Black, and we'll work through them I promise, no beta we die like men, these guys have a lot to work through
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:34:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25336933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littl_prince/pseuds/littl_prince
Summary: About when certain things — the company of the person you hate the most, for instance — suddenly start to matter more than before.
Relationships: Sirius Black & Severus Snape
Comments: 31
Kudos: 90





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work was originally supposed to be a one-chapter fic, but I felt it got a bit too long for that, so this will be posted in fragments. It will be divided into two or three parts, depending on the length it ends up being, and the next part will be posted within three to five days.
> 
> I hope you enjoy the read!

In the morning was usually when Sirius felt the most restless. Today he got up, saw that it was half past six, and made his way down to the kitchens still in his nightclothes. There was no one in the house anyway.

It had been two days since everyone who had come to visit for Christmas had gone back to their lives, and left Sirius to rot in his own. He didn’t even bother to call for Kreacher; if he heard him muttering under his breath one more time about how much of a bad son he’d been, he might just snap and really murder him. (No, he wouldn’t do that. He remembered Hermione’s horrified face when he said things like that; _I’m not actually going to do it, I wouldn’t, you know I wouldn’t_.)

_“... she swore he was no son of hers and he’s back, they say he’s a murderer too -”_

He had hoped Harry might call through the mirror, or else even one of the twins, Fred and George, who could have been able to find a way around the letter ban by now. He’d thought they had built up some level of companionship, what with their fascination about the Marauders’ Map and all that. They’d asked him so many questions, and talked for hours about it, plus the passageways they’d discovered that weren’t on there. But then, maybe they only did all that because they pitied him or something. Maybe they thought he was pathetic.

_"Easy for you to say, stuck here! I don’t see you risking your neck!”_

He dug through the pantry with more force than was necessary, knocking out an empty jar in the process. There were some leftover ingredients from Molly’s cooking. But he’d never known how to actually cook anything, other than eggs and bacon and toast. He’d learned how to make soup once; but that was when he’d been staying at James’s place, and he couldn’t actually remember.

In the end, he settled for a half-empty bag of chips that someone (probably either Ron or Tonks) had left behind. He Summoned a goblet and poured water into it absently.

Maybe he’d send an owl to Remus, ask him to come over for a bit. He knew Remus was jobless at the moment, and he’d probably have nothing better to do. But Remus almost never came over, considering. Sirius had asked him to stay longer the last time he’d come over, but Remus had said something about fixing the plumbing at his place before grabbing his coat. Remus had always been a terrible liar. Sirius suddenly had an urge to seize the silver goblet and throw it at the opposite wall.

Another day of waiting around it was. When he’d first found out he’d be stuck here, Dumbledore had told him they’d be keeping him updated on whatever went on. Dumbledore had never specified who ‘they’ were; maybe Sirius should have known then. No one bothered to owl him with the news, and he’d welcome anything at this point, even things that were completely irrelevant to the war. No one bothered to send a single message telling them about their day, maybe asking him if he was all right. _Why even keep me here, then? Why even keep me alive?_

He supposed he’d go back to bed. There wasn’t anything worth doing anyway, not that there ever was. He heard his spine crack as he got up. He tossed the bag of chips into the bin next to the sink; leftover chips inside the bag flew everywhere. He ignored it and trudged back out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

\---

He was woken by the sound of his mother’s portrait screaming her head off.

“-disgusting half-blood filth sneaking about in the noble House of Black!”

He bolted out of bed and changed as quickly as he could into something more presentable. By the time he’d gotten out of his room, the screeches had stopped. _Half-blood,_ he thought. _Must be Remus_. Though Remus had been careful enough not to wake his mother for a few months now.

He made his way down the stairs and saw no one in the main hall. Hearing clinking noises from the kitchen, he rushed inside to find-

“ _You_.”

Severus Snape took a moment to turn around from where he’d been crouched. “I had hoped,” he said silkily, facing Sirius, “that you’d be too lazy or otherwise indisposed to come down and investigate.”

“What are you doing here? Get out of my house!” Sirius’s voice was trembling and he tried his best to calm it somehow. And to think he’d thought that there would be someone here to _see him._

“You seem to be sorely mistaken, Black.” Snape’s voice was low and smooth and Sirius hated it - Snape had always been quick to explode into cursing and incoherence back at school, it was one of the things he’d relished in. “ _I_ have no wish to be inside your house, as near and dear it must be to you. I’m on my way out, if you don’t mind.”

“Why are you here?” _What does it matter why he’s here? He’s going to leave you alone._

 _Because no one ever tells me anything,_ thought Sirius, and to his horror, he felt a lump rising in his throat.

Snape looked at him for a moment, his eyebrows raised. Sirius was sure he could see his eyes watering, and he tried to look as cold and disdainful as the man facing him did.

After a moment, Snape reached inside his robes — Sirius leapt for his wand, his mind jumping to three days previously — but he merely pulled out what looked to be several empty potion vials and held them up for Sirius to see. He then stowed them back inside his robes and swept around the table, making his way around Sirius.

“What were _they_ doing here anyway?”

Snape stopped on his way out of the kitchen and turned warily back towards him. “Wouldn’t you like to know, Black,” he said. “Trying to gather up information to tell Dumbledore how _you_ know I haven’t truly reformed?”

For the first time, Sirius thought he heard something other than cold, detached hatred in Snape’s voice. Was it anger? Something like savage pleasure coursed through him.

“Come on, you must have an answer ready for _that_ , if you’re as good a spy as everyone seems to think you are.”

Snape took a moment to answer. “Surprising as I found it given your utter lack of sufficient knowledge and skill in the subject of Potions,” he said, in that same maddeningly slow tone, “I-”

“I got an Outstanding in Potions in my NEWT’s, if you must know.”

“Fascinating,” Snape drawled. “As I was saying, I noticed there were a couple of high-quality cleaning and storing devices in the side room off of your kitchen, and -”

“Snooping around, were you?”

“- and I decided to see if they were any good,” Snape finished stubbornly, a glint of annoyance in his eyes now. “Is that _good enough_ of an explanation for you, Black?”

Sirius didn’t say anything. Just glared back at Snape. _If I could have picked anyone to take my place in Azkaban, it would have been you._

“Speaking of,” Snape continued, still looking at Sirius as if he found him mildly revolting, “you wouldn’t mind if I used them from time to time, if they turn out to be any good? It isn’t as if _you_ have any use for them, in any case.”

“Get out,” said Sirius suddenly. “Get the _fuck_ out of my house.”

“Certainly,” said Snape smoothly. And he turned and walked down the hall, closing the door behind him without so much as a backwards glance.

Sirius’s hand dabbed at his eyes and they came away wet. He had never felt more humiliated in his life, even compared to three days ago, when Snape had called him a coward in front of Harry and he hadn’t been able to find a single retort to throw back. He couldn’t fathom why, for the life of him. Snape hadn’t said anything that out of the usual this time; why the hell had he teared up?

That Snape would have such an effect on him in the first place, two times in a row at that, was utterly embarrassing. He had sulked all through dinner that last time, and he hadn’t even talked to Harry about anything, even though it was the last night he’d see him until summer. _And maybe Harry thinks I’m pathetic too,_ he thought. _Brooding all evening like a bloody kid throwing a temper tantrum._

He stalked back into the kitchen and found that Snape had left something behind on the kitchen table - the Daily Prophet from the day before. He stared down at it for a few seconds before realizing what he was seeing. Nine black-and-white faces leered back at him, but his eyes were fixed on a woman’s, with straggly black hair and features that somewhat resembled his own. The headline read: _Mass Breakout from Azkaban; Ministry Fears Black is “Rallying Point” for Old Death Eaters_. 

He looked down at the front page for a few more moments. Then he picked up the silver goblet he hadn’t put away earlier, and threw it at the opposite wall.

\---

The next time Snape came to his house, it was for an Order meeting the following day, so Sirius was denied even the pleasure of telling him to get out. He sat as far away from Snape as he could, which turned out to be a mistake, as barely any noise traveled to the foot of the table and he had to strain his ears to listen to some parts of it.

“As you all know, the mass breakout is the most pressing matter at the moment,” said Dumbledore without preamble, once everyone was settled. Snape was sitting two seats down from him, his expression unreadable. Sirius remembered the Daily Prophet and longed for an opportunity to get back at him.

“You would’ve thought Fudge might just see some _sense_ by now,” growled Moody, slamming his hip flask down onto the desk and earning himself a startled hiss from Molly Weasley. “But oh, no —”

“Tension’s tightening inside the Ministry,” said Arthur. Tonks and Kingsley nodded, their faces grim. “Even talking among coworkers about the breakout is being discouraged.”

“What do we know of how the Death Eaters escaped?” Moody directed his question at Dumbledore, and all eyes turned to him.

“The Dementors,” Dumbledore answered wearily. “As we suspected from the night two of them cornered Harry in Little Whinging,” Sirius saw Mundungus fidgeting out of the corner of his eye, “they are becoming less and less controllable as the Dark side is winning them over. It’s highly possible they may have even aided in their escape.”

Sirius thought he could feel a cold draft passing through him by just hearing about the Dementors again. They still haunted him in nightmares, and he would wake up screaming and drenched in sweat. Just last night he had dreamed he was slowly turning into one, Harry casting his stag patronus to drive him away —

“—Sirius, if you have any knowledge of the layout of their prison cells?” Dumbledore was saying.

Sirius stared blankly back for a moment, processing the words he’d heard. Most of the people seated at the table were looking at him, some tentatively inquiring, others with what looked like barely concealed curiosity. A surge of that same emotion he’d felt yesterday while talking to Snape rose up inside him.

“Wouldn’t you know as much as I do?” his voice came out harsher than he’d intended. The only thing, the only useful information he was able to give the Order in _months_ would be about Azkaban, the very place he wished most of all he could forget. He had never felt more inadequate in his life.

It was at that moment that Snape, who had not turned to look at him at Dumbledore’s question, straightened in his chair with a sneer. “Azkaban does not keep records as to where the prisoners are kept, as a means to prevent a planned breakout from outside its walls. As surely —” He stopped speaking mid-sentence and folded his hands on the kitchen table. Sirius noticed that most of the Order members were looking somewhat relieved — had they all heard about what happened at Christmas? — but he knew what Snape had been about to say all the same.

 _Maybe Dumbledore told him not to goad me in meetings_ , he thought. _Lest I explode in all my runaway convict madness._

He stayed stubbornly silent for a few more moments, ignoring Remus’s stern look. _He has no right to tell me off. No one at this table gets to make me do anything._ Except he was already being made to do most everything he did. He felt like kicking aside his chair and storming out of the kitchen.

Dumbledore eventually settled for, “Well, I hope you will be able to tell us when you have properly recalled it, Sirius,” before moving on to the possible plans they could construct to track said Death Eaters down.

The meeting lasted for two more hours. Sirius barely listened to any of it. Though he did catch a discussion about Hogwarts. Educational Decree Number 26 apparently was causing some distress and annoyance to the school staff, along with it being one of the top contenders for the spot for the most stupid thing Sirius had ever heard in his life. But even news of that ridiculous decree couldn’t quite shake off the faint ringing in his ears.

It took a second for him to realize that the meeting had ended; people were already starting to get up when he had snapped out of his thoughts. Snape was standing at the head of the table, conversing with Dumbledore quietly; as Sirius watched, McGonagall walked over to join in.

 _Can’t even bid him goodbye with a good insult_ , thought Sirius. _Not with an audience like that_. But none of his insults seemed to have much of an effect on Snape these days anyway; not like when they were back at school, when he hadn’t even needed to try.

He approached Remus instead, who had just pushed his chair back in and slung his coat over one shoulder. “Er,” he said. He didn’t know why he felt so much like a fish out of water, even with Remus; this was _Moony_ , one of his oldest friends. He shouldn’t be flailing about trying to start a conversation.

Remus turned to look at him. “Sirius,” he said, with a smile that did not quite seem to reach his eyes. “It was good to see you again.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, you too.”

“Listen,” said Remus, “I’ve finally got a job at a Muggle place, and I have to work long hours to be able to scrape a living. ‘S why I haven’t been able to come around that often.”

“Oh,” Sirius answered. “That’s good. That you —”

“Yes.” Remus sounded noncommittal. “I don’t think… I’ll be able to visit that often from now on either. You know some Ministry people tail me sometimes, and with the job…”

“Oh,” Sirius said again. “Oh. That’s fine. It’s fine.” A dead weight had settled in his stomach. _No one_. “Could you — er — never mind,” he said lamely. He had been about to ask Remus to write to Harry and covertly tell him somehow to call him through the mirror, but Remus had already turned halfway towards the kitchen door. “Bye, Remus,” he said instead.

“Take care, Sirius.” And with that, Remus left the kitchen, leaving him standing by the table, alone. He made to grab the chair in front of him — to throw at the table, probably — when he heard noises coming from the side room. He looked around just in time to see Snape walking out, holding a case in his hand.

Had he heard his conversation with Remus? How utterly pathetic Sirius had been?

“Get out,” he snarled.

“What do you think I’m doing, Black?” said Snape, as he made his way around the table.

“Don’t _ever_ touch my possessions. Again.” Anything, anything to rid himself of the twisting ache in his stomach, even if it was going to be nothing but a mild inconvenience to Snape.

Snape paused on his way out. “In that case,” he said smoothly, turning back towards the way he’d come, “there are a few bottles I left inside, that I’d rather you not damage.” And he swept back into the small space. Sirius heard several clicks and the clinking of potion vials, and then Snape walked back out again.

Sirius followed him out of the kitchen. He watched as Snape made his way down the hall, paused to set his case down, and pulled his outer robes down from the clothing rack, leaving it empty. 

_No one._

“Oi.”

Snape turned slowly towards him, his arm still stretched out where it had reached to grab the case.

“You…” Sirius paused. What was he doing? Going mad, most probably. But he was absolutely sure he _was_ going to become insane if he stayed like this, stuck inside the house with nothing more than his mother’s portrait, Kreacher, and the constant reminder of everything he’d loathed as a child. 

“I am busy, Black.” Snape’s curt voice snapped him out of his thoughts.

“I…” Sirius paused, tried again. “I don’t have… much use for those things.” He gestured towards the kitchen. “So.”

Snape stood there with an eyebrow raised for a moment. Sirius wondered if he was going to laugh at him. _I’ll curse him bloody if he does, I swear._

But Snape’s expression did not change. At last, he said, “I see,” before grabbing the case again and stalking back towards the kitchen. Sirius heard the clicking sounds again, and he felt a wave of something like relief. _I’ve gone mad._

When Snape made his way back outside, Sirius was still standing in the same spot, and he watched Snape go without another word.

\---

He had always been able to hold his liquor better than most. It was a thing he used to feel proud of back in the day, but now he found it just annoyed him. _If I were a lightweight, I’d be properly drunk already_ , he thought as he poured himself another glass. His mind was only just beginning to grow fuzzy around the edges.

There was no joy in drinking any more. Nowadays he just did it to pass the time. If he had someone to pass the bottle back and forth between, it would probably be a different story. He barely remembered the rules of any of the drinking games he’d played; but then, maybe doing those things again now would just make it more depressing than fun. It wasn’t the same. Nothing was.

It took him a moment to properly hear the footsteps heading towards the kitchens. He looked up to see Snape entering the room.

“You came back,” was probably the best he could come up with considering the circumstances, but he would still slap himself hard for it when he woke up sober a few hours later.

Snape said nothing. Just raised an eyebrow at him still holding the glass in his hand, then stalked over into the side room. By the time he came back out, Sirius had stowed away the bottle in the lower cabinet and poured the remainder of his drink still in the glass down the sink. Later, he couldn’t recall exactly why he’d done that, except to give Snape no more reasons to point out how much of a useless lump he was nowadays. Merlin, he hated being useless.

“If you feel I am intruding on your… _very_ important affairs,” said Snape’s voice from somewhere above him — Sirius turned in his seat to look at him, “I could take these devices back to Hogwarts. It will take some Detachment Charms, but they wouldn’t suffer any damage, and seeing as you have no particular use for them —”

“No,” said Sirius gruffly.

“Pardon?” Snape’s voice was coated with a kind of dry incredulity.

“ _No_ ,” he repeated.

“Whyever not, Black? It would be best not to run into each other if possible —”

“Because I _said so_ .” Sirius tried unsuccessfully to hold in a burp. He could practically feel Snape sneering from above him, and he loathed it. _I’m not letting him do things his way. Not if I can help it._

He didn’t register Snape saying anything else after that, and he only realized he’d left when he lifted his head to glare at him again and found the space in front of him empty. He paused while reaching for the place he’d put the bottle, then changed his mind and trudged out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

\---

“I’d’ve thought the first thing you’d work on was your inability to get your greasy nose out of a book and watch where you're going.”

Snape had awoken Sirius’s mother for the second time in a week now; Sirius was beginning to wonder if it was deliberate on Snape’s part.

“Perhaps you should consider throwing out the troll leg umbrella stand. Or do you find it tasteful?”

“Shut up. You’re worse than Tonks; and at least she’s fun to be around.”

“I’ll clean these and be on my way,” said Snape curtly.

Sirius, who had been expecting something more akin to a retort, stood with his mouth open for a moment as Snape swept past him without another word. After a few seconds, he followed him, leaning on the doorframe of the kitchen as he tried to figure out what to say. He’d never been able to stand silence.

“How’s Harry doing?” was what he came up with. He tried to sound casual, and not at all upset about the fact that he knew absolutely nothing of his godson’s life at the moment.

Snape took a moment to answer, his back to Sirius as he rummaged for bottles in the case he’d brought with him.

“Why, I thought you considered me the last person who should be responsible for your godson’s wellbeing.”

 _He’s definitely deliberately goading me on this one_ , thought Sirius. _Is he trying to make me_ say _I don’t have any communication with Harry now?_ As if he needed more reminders on that. He’d even given him the _mirror_ , for Merlin’s sake — maybe Harry really was avoiding having to talk to him.

He was still trying to think of a sufficient insult when Snape spoke again. “As you must know, Potter has started his Occlumency lessons. He is not as… abysmal as I feared, but he is considerably lacking in the ability to clear his mind. Which is no surprise given how he normally conducts himself. Otherwise, it seems he has been keeping himself mostly out of trouble, remarkably enough.”

“Oh,” said Sirius. The dig about his godson aside — and it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been expecting it — he hadn’t expected Snape to actually tell him how Harry was doing. He decided he’d find out as much as he could, seeing as Snape was apparently in one of his better moods. “So he’s doing good overall, then?”

“Yes, Black,” said Snape. He sounded mildly annoyed, but Sirius decided to ignore that as well. “Given his start with his Defense classes in particular, he seems to be keeping his head down nowadays.”

“What do you mean? Defense — you mean that Dolores Umbridge woman?”

“Yes,” said Snape. “Potter got what is possibly a record number of detentions from the moment the first term started. You were unaware?”

Sirius couldn’t think of anything to say. Was this some new tactic Snape was using? Being more civil than usual just so he could catch Sirius off guard with one of those comments again? The words that seemed to dig into his bones and settle there, leaving him unable to shake them off.

Snape seemed to wait for his answer with his back turned to him. After a moment, he spoke again. “I’m not surprised Potter didn’t inform you about it. Detentions are hardly a thing to bring up when seeking approval from parental figures. And Potter’s certainly the type to want to make himself seem better than he actually is.”

Sirius was still trying to work out if what he’d just heard had been closer to an insult or a compliment when Snape straightened up, shutting his case with a snap. He turned to face Sirius. “I’m done here for now, I think,” he said.

“Alright.” It had been quicker than Sirius had expected. He couldn’t quite put a finger on how he felt about that.

“Were you standing there the whole time?” said Snape, eyeing Sirius, who was still standing near the door.

“Yeah. Got a problem with that?”

“Why not sit down?”

It was the first time in as long as he could remember that Snape had asked him two consecutive questions with no malicious intent in either of them. “I get restless,” he said.

“Hm.” Snape lightly threw something he had been holding in his other hand onto the kitchen table. They were two Daily Prophets, one from today and another from the day before. “Reading these would be one way to rid yourself of the feeling, if only for a while.”

Sirius remembered the first Prophet Snape had left behind for him to see. He suddenly wondered if he hadn’t properly grasped Snape’s intent in leaving it there after all.

After a moment, Snape adjusted his grip on the case. “I’ll see myself out, then, Black.”

“Yeah,” said Sirius, trailing off at the end of the word, only then realizing that he hadn’t responded at all to Snape giving him the papers. He wanted to ask… He’d really gone round the twist, hadn’t he? Had his pride also died along with his hope?

Snape looked at him with that unreadable expression he always wore. All of a sudden, Sirius was struck by how much this man was a stranger to him; the spitting and snarling boy he’d known at school, twitchy and quick to anger, almost never showed himself in this new version of Snape. _For twelve years,_ he thought, _he grew up. And I stayed the same_. He was still stuck, wasn’t he, living inside a feeble imprint of the life he’d once had. It was why he clung on so hard to Harry, why he kept trying to mend whatever had been broken between himself and Remus.

Then Snape said, “I’ll need to come pick up the vials I left two or three days later.” And Sirius was abruptly reminded of the fact that Snape was supposed to be skilled in the Mind Arts. Had he seen what he was thinking? If so, why hadn’t he commented on any of it, goaded Sirius like he used to? But if not, how else would he have known what Sirius had been about to ask?

“Oh,” he replied. “Okay. Right.”

Snape gave a nod before leaving this time, and Sirius realized a few hours later, while mustering up the energy to fix up something decent to eat for once, that that was the first time Snape had given him anything akin to a parting gesture. He made and ate some bacon and toast, managed to order Kreacher to do some cleaning up in the kitchen without getting too angry at him, and made his way up to his room with the two Prophets in his hands and his spirits higher than they had been in a while.

As he settled down onto his bed and opened today’s paper, he thought again of Snape saying he was a parental figure to Harry. Despite it being more of a statement of fact than any actual compliment, it was certainly more than anyone else said about him being Harry’s godfather; Molly Weasley, for instance. He grimaced and shook the pages to adjust them.

That night, he had a rare dreamless sleep, and woke up the next morning, well-rested and hungry.

\---

Snape came over two days later. Sirius asked him questions and he answered them with minimal testiness; how Harry was doing (fine, nothing new), how things were at Hogwarts in general (awful, as always), how Occlumency lessons were going (few improvements; your godson is as lazy as ever, Black), if there was anything new going on in the Order he didn’t know about (not anything concrete the rest of them actually knew of, but Dumbledore seemed to be disappearing off to places a lot).

“Which kinds of places?”

“Wouldn’t we all like to know,” said Snape, though his voice wasn’t dripping with the usual disdainful sarcasm. He was half-sitting on the kitchen table, having finished collecting his vials but unable to leave due to Sirius’s constant questions. “He’s keeping the vast majority of his moves secret even from the members closest to him. Even Minerva McGonagall is becoming somewhat impatient.”

“Mm.”

“It doesn’t help that there’s a Ministry plant in the school.” Snape’s expression soured as he mentioned it.

“That bad, is she?” Sirius said; he couldn’t help but smirk a little.

“Yes,” said Snape vehemently. Sirius laughed.

They started to develop something of a routine; every two or three days, Snape would come over to the house to use the supplies in the side room. Sirius didn’t know exactly what he was doing in there; he had had a peek inside the space himself after Snape had left, and had been able to make neither heads nor tails of any of the equipment there. He hadn’t bothered to ask Snape; he didn’t fancy a potions lecture.

About every five to ten days or so, Order meetings would be held as per usual in the kitchen. Sirius talked to Remus less and less, and he slowly realized that their relationship had become the kind that would be pretty much severed once Sirius found it in himself to let go of Remus. The thought didn’t hurt him as much as it might have, but he still felt a dull ache whenever he looked at his friend’s scarred and lined face.

The rest of the Order members didn’t interact with Sirius much. He could tell most of them avoided him; that much hadn’t changed since the beginning. But after every meeting, he would linger in the kitchen, and sometimes Snape would lag behind as well. Neither of them said anything, just stood in silence for a few moments before Snape turned and walked out. Sirius didn’t really know why they did it. He never asked Snape about that, either.

\---

From time to time, Sirius had nightmares about Azkaban. By from time to time, he meant at least once a week; and the nightmares didn’t just come around at night. 

This time, it was the same old ritual, from start to finish. He was hearing the news about Lily and James’s death. He was at Godric’s Hollow. He was standing in front of Wormtail. He was laughing as the Aurors took him away… He was still laughing when he woke up.

Someone was knocking on his bedroom door. Sirius bolted upright and checked the time; it was a quarter past seven.

“Black? What atrocities are you up to now?”

It was Snape. “Nothing,” Sirius called back. He had no idea how loud he’d been. He had heard inmates wailing and screaming in their sleep, but he’d never known what he sounded like when going through a nightmare - _please Merlin tell me I’m one of the quieter ones_. “Are you here to pick up your bottles again?”

Snape made an affirmative noise, but Sirius didn’t hear footsteps walking away.

“What d’you want?” he said after a moment.

Snape was silent for a moment. Then Sirius heard him making his way down the stairs.

“Bastard,” he muttered as he got up and dressed. He’d recently discovered that it was Snape’s thing to simply choose not to answer any question he didn’t want to. _How he reports to Voldemort without being tortured just for sheer lack of manners,_ Sirius thought, picking out the least dirty shirt out of a pile next to his bed. But then, he wasn’t in any position to be telling anyone off about manners.

It took him a longer time to get out of the room than usual; he checked his appearance in the mirror to make sure he didn’t look too haunted, and tried to bully his hair into looking like he had not just gone through all his life’s horrors in his sleep. If Snape had heard him laughing — oh, he had definitely heard him laughing — or, god forbid, screaming, he wasn’t going to give him an opportunity to bring it up if he could help it.

He discovered that he would have had no such problems anyway, once he trudged down to the kitchen.

Snape was sitting in a chair that was closest to the side cabinet he so often visited, holding a half-empty potion vial in his hand with his eyes closed. His breathing seemed more labored than usual.

“Snape?”

Without opening his eyes, Snape downed the rest of the potion with a grimace. He then turned to look at Sirius. 

“I’d left these in the sterilizer with charms to make them more potent,” he said by way of explanation, holding the empty bottle up and shaking it a little.

“What happened?” _Did something happen at Hogwarts?_

“Your godson is fine,” said Snape in a mildly annoyed voice. His breathing was slowly returning to normal.

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Isn’t it?”

Sirius paused. “No,” he settled. “I asked you what happened.”

“Why are you so determined to get answers to the most inconsequential of questions?”

It was Sirius who was starting to get annoyed now. “Maybe if you bothered to give me straightforward answers -”

“What do you _think_ happened, Black?” Snape’s voice was back to its normal low drawl, but Sirius couldn’t muster the energy to hate it as much as he used to just now. He still felt wrung out and sore.

“I… Death Eater meeting?” he suggested.

Snape smirked. “Very astute of you.”

“You still haven’t answered my question, you know.”

Snape let out a long-suffering sigh that Sirius felt was a tad unfair. “Why do I get the feeling we’re going around in circles?”

“You know what I’m saying. I’m asking why you’re — why you needed that potion. What even is that potion?”

“It’s for pain,” said Snape. “The Dark Lord has a fondness for causing pain.” He faced Sirius with a mocking smile on his face. “Is that good enough of an answer for you?”

Sirius remembered the last time he’d heard Snape say that, the first time he’d caught Snape in the kitchen, and he realized that all the vitriolic hatred he’d felt back then had apparently dissipated at some point. Now he only felt a nagging curiosity he couldn’t quite put a finger on. He remembered what he’d thought back in his room just a few minutes previously, and something twisted inside him.

“No,” he said. “But I suppose I can settle for now.”

“Good,” said Snape. There was a pause.

“What?” Sirius eyed Snape questioningly.

Snape took another moment before answering. “This particular potion happens to numb the magical core in order to cut off the connection between the curse and the wizard,” he said it all very slowly.

Another pause. “So you’re saying,” said Sirius, turning over what Snape had just said in his head, “that you can’t get in touch with your magic properly while it’s working?”

“For about an hour or so.” 

“... You’re asking me if you can stay here for an hour.” Sirius realized; he grinned. “You could just ask me outright, you know, Snape; or would that hurt your pride?”

Snape grunted, shooting a glare his way.

“Fine, fine,” said Sirius, still smirking. “Dumbledore would never let me hear the end of it if I kicked you out and you ended up in more trouble.” He sat himself down across from Snape, finding satisfaction in Snape’s scowl.

After a moment, it occurred to him that it was near dinnertime. He wondered if he should ask Snape about it. The louder side of his mind — the side he’d always held closest — was strongly against the idea. But he noticed that, despite having somewhat recovered, Snape still looked rather pale, and there was still an ever so slight tremor in his fingers.

Not knowing how to go about it, he yelled for Kreacher, making Snape jump slightly in his seat. Kreacher appeared, glaring daggers at Sirius.

“Make us some decent food to eat,” Sirius ordered, barely refraining from adding ‘for once’ to the end. Out of the corner of his vision, he saw Snape twist slightly in his seat, and he could feel Snape’s eyes on him.

“Yes, Master,” said Kreacher, bowing. To Sirius’s surprise, he walked out without muttering any insults.

The kitchen was quiet for a moment. Then Sirius said, “Better wait in the sitting room,” to no one in particular. Snape paused, still looking at him, then slowly got up from his seat and followed Sirius up the stairs.

“Your house elf seems to be in a better mood than usual,” Snape said, as they entered the overly large sitting room.

Sirius scowled. “If he is, I don’t want to know why.” Snape raised his eyebrows slightly, but did not comment further. They sat in armchairs whose makers had apparently disregarded even the smallest amount of comfort in favour of pure aesthetic value. The house was like that in general; it reminded Sirius of the family that had once lived in it, and he hated every inch of it in turn.

When Kreacher called, they made their way back down to the kitchen. Snape did not ask Sirius why he was doing him this extra favour. He didn’t really say much of anything, and his expression betrayed nothing. Sirius didn’t know what to make of that.

The dinner was barely edible, as Sirius had expected, though he admittedly felt little guilt over it, as the results would have been pretty similar had he cooked himself. To his surprise, Snape did not complain. Perhaps he’d expected it as well.

After they were done eating in silence, Snape checked the clock. “I’ll just stay for… eight more minutes, and then leave.”

Sirius nodded, swatting Snape’s wand away where it had pointed towards his plate and levitating everything towards the sink himself.

“My thanks,” said Snape, after a moment. The words shocked Sirius more than anything else he’d heard the past few months. “For that,” Snape continued, gesturing towards Sirius’s wand, “and for the meal.”

Sirius remembered the last time he’d had his wand out while facing Snape, recalled his darting eyes. He hastily stowed it back into his sleeve. “You shouldn’t be thanking me for the meal. Probably should be me apologizing instead.”

Snape let out a puff of air in a kind of half-snort. “All the same,” he said. “I’d been going the whole day without any food.”

Sirius had never thought about the concept of Snape being hungry. “Do you normally do that?” he asked.

“Sometimes,” said Snape airily.

“You probably shouldn’t do that,” said Sirius, in a voice of mock disapproval.

“Is this advice coming from someone who eats three square meals a day himself?” said Snape, smirking slightly. “Or are you just a hypocrite?”

“There was no need to hit below the belt like that.”

Snape shook his head, a ghost of a smile still twisting his mouth. Sirius wasn’t used to seeing that sort of expression on him; he later realized he might have stared, just a bit.

When Snape made to leave, Sirius rose with him. Snape paused in his movements and looked around at him; Sirius had never followed him out of the kitchen for anything but a less-than-civil discussion before. He shrugged.

“To make sure you don’t collapse on your way out or anything.”

Snape rolled his eyes; as he turned, Sirius caught a glimpse of what he thought might have been that small smile still lingering on his face. They walked together to the door, and when Snape had slung his outer robes over himself, they exchanged a nod before he swung the door open and disappeared into the night.

\---

“You don’t like Hogwarts meals?”

“ _You_ try eating every meal at Hogwarts for - what - more than twenty years of your life, and not get bored of it. Even the best-made dishes lose their taste after a while.”

It was nearly a week after Snape had first stayed for dinner. Two days since that evening, Sirius had told him — in another fit of mad loneliness — to come over for dinner again. And Snape had inexplicably half-agreed. “If that is to happen, I shall bring the food,” he had said. “Your house elf seems to be out to poison you, which would be especially regrettable when we’re eating the same meal.” Sirius had laughed.

“You sound heated,” he said now, grinning. “Do you have a vendetta against the Hogwarts house elves that I don’t know about?”

“Umbridge sits next to me,” said Snape, scowling at his fork. “Keeps asking the most impertinent questions. I know she thinks she’s going to uncover some great secret about me, ex-Death Eater and all, but all she’s succeeding in doing is making me lose all concept of appetite.”

Sirius remembered with a jolt that he’d been trying to do the same thing, just under a month ago. He recalled Snape’s badly suppressed anger at his inquiry, wondered if he’d perhaps reminded Snape of Umbridge. He never wanted to remind anyone of Umbridge, he decided.

“I’ve said it before, but I’ve heard the most awful things about that old hag,” he said, for a start.

“From Lupin, no doubt.”

“Yeah.” _Though Remus doesn’t come over at all anymore_ , he thought. _It’s starting to feel more at ease to have_ you _around_. Who would have thought? “And from Harry.”

“Hm,” said Snape. (Had he heard the uncertainty in Sirius’s voice?) Then, “If food from Hogwarts is what you want, I can ask the house elves to set something aside.”

Sirius’s mind blanked for a second. He couldn’t remember the last time _anyone_ offered to do something purely for his benefit, let alone Snape. “That’d be… good,” he managed. “Do they still make jam doughnuts?”

“Occasionally,” said Snape, making a face that suggested they were the last thing he would ever touch during dessert. Did Snape even eat dessert? It wouldn’t surprise Sirius if he didn’t.

Snape continued to come around for dinner about twice a week, always with several days’ worth of Prophets to toss at Sirius, sometimes with Hogwarts food. He even brought a bunch of jam doughnuts over once, though the way he carried the bag suggested that there were much more unpleasant things than food inside it. Sirius occasionally remembered what used to be his favorite dishes, and asked for Snape to bring them. He also asked him to stay for drinks a couple of times, but Snape always refused. “School night,” he would say as he got up from the table.

 _Since when_ , he thought on the night of one of said visits, curled up in bed and reading the Prophet again, _had he and Snape become so civil to each other?_ And why did Snape keep coming over? All the rest of the Order had better things to do than hang around some half-mad has-been stuck inside his house and on the run from the law.

 _He probably doesn’t have anyone else either._ Sirius remembered their school days. He used to look back on them and relish in his role in the dismantling of Snape’s school life, if only to bear the sheer humiliation of Snape always asking him how the cleaning was going. Now he recalled the skinny, greasy-haired Slytherin boy, and felt something like guilt. He had always been better than Snape, had assumed he would always _be_ better than him. And now he was more powerless than he ever had been, and Snape was being talked about as being one of the best assets to their cause.

So maybe, just maybe, he could understand now.

Even if their roles had been reversed, from what he knew there were very few people who would claim to be close to Snape. Snape had always been mostly solitary. _Maybe he doesn’t like that._ Then, _Who would?_ Sirius supposed that was as good an answer as any for Snape to keep coming over and staying in his company. And where months before he would probably have found the idea repulsive, now he waited every other day for evening to fall. The whispered suggestions of his madness for feeling like that were dying down from the back of his mind; he found he simply didn’t care.

\---

The second Tuesday of February, Snape came over with noticeably more bundles than he normally did.

“Sweets,” said Sirius in a surprised voice, peering inside one of the bags.

“Valentine’s day,” said Snape in a deadpan voice. “Tomorrow. The house elves insisted.”

Sirius burst out laughing. “Are they convinced you’re bringing two-person dinners every other evening to some secret lover of yours or something?”

Snape’s sour expression did not soften, but Sirius thought he caught a glint of amusement in the black eyes. Sirius himself was still chortling as he unwrapped the actual dinner and Summoned forks and knives.

“If you’ve quite finished enjoying yourself,” said Snape; he was interrupted by a renewed burst of laughter.

“Ah, okay, sorry.” Sirius sat himself down and motioned for Snape to do the same. Snape reluctantly lowered himself into the chair, a shadow of a glare still in his face.

They rarely spoke while they ate, but today Snape broke the silence after a couple of minutes. “Tomorrow also happens to be a Hogsmeade day for the students. No classes.”

Sirius pondered why he was telling him this for a moment, before his face lit up. “Ah. Tonight’s not a school night, is it?” Snape nodded, and Sirius reached behind him to pat the cabinet where he stored his bottles. “I’ve got everything covered on that front.”

“If you get as inebriated as you were that other time, I’m leaving.”

Sirius promptly remembered that other time, and scowled. “Won’t happen.”

“Good.”

Sirius heard a hint of amusement in Snape’s voice. He looked up from his food, and saw that Snape was smirking. He’d never seen Snape tease anyone before, and he was surprised; it wasn’t in his list of things he thought Snape would do.

 _Maybe I’ve rubbed off on him or something._ The thought didn’t disgust him like it used to. He met Snape’s eyes and smiled sarcastically back.

As it turned out, Snape was a lightweight, and Sirius found great joy in gloating about it. He didn’t drink much himself either, lest he humiliate himself; whenever he got properly drunk these days, he’d throw fits about things he’d barely remember the next morning. Their talk mostly revolved around the Order; not the heavy topics, but things like their mutual dislike for certain members or the Houses each member had been in.

“I taught Tonks.”

“That must have been a riot.”

“I barely remember it, to be honest,” said Snape. There was an easy smile on his face that Sirius didn’t ever remember him wearing before. “The Metamorphmagus thing, yes, but she never actually did anything all that memorable while I taught her.”

“Which, coming from you, must be a good thing,” said Sirius, turning his glass in his hand and chortling.

“I don’t know what impression I’ve given off, but I do not brush off the positive achievements of my pupils.”

Snape’s tone was dry, which, as Sirius had quickly learned, meant that he was joking. It made his spirits lift more than the drinking had ever managed, and he said, “I’m sure,” to muffled chuckles from both of them.

When Snape left, it was nearing eleven O’ clock, and Sirius might have considered, just for a drunken second, asking him to stay the night. As it was, he walked with him to the front door and waved dramatically at him as he stepped out of the house, to more bursts of laughter. Sirius watched Snape’s silhouette twist and vanish as he Disapparated. He then stood there for a moment, gazing out at the dark street, before making his way back inside.

\---

The next Monday, Snape walked in with, “I’ve got bad news for you.” Sirius caught the glint in his eyes and a hint of that smile he’d seen the week before, and the slight panic he’d felt at the words died down. Snape paused for a moment, then shook the bags he’d been carrying at him. “My arms are going to fall off.”

Sirius took two of the bags and they made their way into the kitchen. He could tell Snape had noticed his unnecessary flicker of panic, and was glad he hadn’t brought it up. Snape seemed to know which things Sirius wanted to be left unmentioned. He was grateful.

The ‘bad news’ turned out to be news of the abysmal state of the Gryffindor Quidditch team.

“That’s terrible,” said Sirius, when Snape had finished relaying what he’d seen of their practice. “Horrifying.”

“I’ve never seen a team more in shambles since the time Ravenclaw had to find substitutes for four of their players at once.”

“What happened then?”

“Apparently, two Chasers, the Keeper and the Seeker got into a fight about Merlin knows what. They were put in the hospital wing right before the match.”

“Who were they playing against?”

“Slytherin.”

Sirius squinted at Snape in mock suspicion. “Are you quite sure the fight was internal?”

“Oh, I’m absolutely sure.”

Sirius laughed, before letting out a small sigh. “The situation at the school really is bad, though, isn’t it? I’ve never heard of students getting lifelong bans on playing Quidditch.”

“Minerva’s irate about the whole thing,” said Snape. “It’s hitting her Gryffindors the hardest, what with their more openly rebellious nature. But it probably won’t be long until the rest of the school receives more or less the same treatment.”

“Is she still inspecting Hagrid’s lessons?” Sirius remembered hearing about it during one of the Order’s meetings. He was able to pay more attention to those nowadays.

“And Sybill Trelawney’s.” Snape sighed as well. “It’s been taking a toll on the two of them, especially.”

“And Dumbledore can’t do anything about it?”

“He tries, I’m sure,” said Snape. “It’s highly probable that more extreme measures would have been put in place by now had it not been for him. But he can’t disregard the damn decrees, at least not openly.”

“Poor Harry,” said Sirius.

“She locked up his broomstick.”

“ _What?_ ”

“His and the Weasley twins’. They’re in the dungeons somewhere.”

“ _I_ bought him that broom.”

“Ah,” Snape pointed his fork at Sirius, “the Hogwarts staff checked the thing for all sorts of curses and jinxes two years ago because we thought you might have sent it.”

“Harry didn’t tell me about that.” The words didn’t come out the way he’d intended. They sounded almost sad. He felt strange talking about Harry these days, as if they’d been estranged or something. And Harry still hadn’t called him through the mirror.

Snape took another bite, looking over at Sirius, before he spoke again. “Minerva told me he was devastated when she first came to take it away,” he said slowly. “He apparently didn’t speak to Hermione Granger for some time because she alerted the staff about it. When he flies on that blasted thing,” he said, grimacing slightly, “they’re one and the same.”

“I know,” said Sirius. He smiled, and it hurt a little less. “I’ve seen him.”

\---

Snape continued to keep Sirius updated on the state of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, culminating in that Saturday with their performance in their match against Hufflepuff, which had apparently been nothing short of cringeworthy. “Thank Merlin for Ginny Weasley,” said Sirius, after wincing five separate times at Snape’s retelling of the event.

The Monday after that, Snape came in with some other paper that was not the Daily Prophet. Sirius recognized it as being the same magazine that had suggested that he was actually Stubby Boardman.

“Take a look at this.” Snape handed him the magazine as soon as he’d hung up his outer robes. Sirius saw Harry’s face on the front cover and, eyes widening, read the words written across the picture: _“Harry Potter Speaks Out at Last: The Truth About He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and the Night I Saw Him Return”_.

Snape steered him into the kitchen, as he had his nose buried in the paper the whole time. Harry had left no small detail out, and Sirius remembered him the day it had happened; he had been drenched in sweat and shaking, and he’d talked about seeing his parents through Priori Incantatem… 

When he finally looked up, Snape had already set out dinner and disappeared into the side room. Sirius sat there, listening to the steady, almost rhythmic clinks of bottles, his mind full of what he’d just read.

When Snape walked back out, he immediately said, “When did he do this interview?”

“On a Hogsmeade visit,” Snape said. “Valentine’s Day. Do you remember?”

“ _Oh_.”

“Did you see who wrote it?”

Sirius hadn’t; he scanned the paper before his head snapped back up to stare at Snape. “Rita Skeeter?” he said incredulously. “Isn’t she the reporter who kept spewing shit about Harry during the Triwizard Tournament?”

Snape nodded as he sat down. “That thing was all anyone would talk about today. Apparently the article came out the day before, but most people only found out about it because Potter was bombarded with letters at breakfast this morning. Oh, and Umbridge making a scene definitely helped.”

“Really? What did she do?”

“Banned Potter from all future Hogsmeade visits —”

“ _What?_ ”

“— gave him a week’s worth of detentions, and passed the most idiotic educational decree yet.”

“Why, what does it say?”

“That any student who’s caught with _The Quibbler_ in their possession will be expelled,” said Snape in a deadpan voice.

Sirius paused while he digested the sheer stupidity of it, and then let out a bark of laughter. “Surely she can’t be _that_ dense. How can she not realize that’ll just make everyone _want_ to read it?”

“You’d be surprised,” said Snape ominously.

They ate in silence for a while, Sirius glancing every now and then at the article he had open next to him.

“He even named all the Death Eaters,” he said after a while. 

He noticed Snape stiffen. 

“What?” It came out a bit more sharply than he’d intended.

Snape gazed off to the side, frowning slightly. “Nothing,” he said. “Just…” He trailed off and fell silent. Sirius had never seen him do that before.

He felt a flicker of something that was probably either anger or frustration. “Did Harry name some of your pals?” He’d been suddenly reminded of why he’d hated Snape so much, and his mood was rapidly souring. He glanced down at the paper again. “He named Lucius Malfoy. Is that it?”

Snape looked at him, an unreadable glint in his eyes. “I went there too,” he said finally. “I went back.”

Sirius frowned. “You were _there_?”

“Not when your _godson_ was. We saw each other in the hospital wing, remember?” said Snape. His voice was still low, as if he didn’t really want to talk about it. “Right after you left, I left to report to the Dark Lord.”

“ _Voldemort._ ” Snape flinched slightly at the name. “You don’t _have_ to call him the Dark Lord, it’s what his Death Eaters call him.”

“And I am.” Snape’s eyes were fixed on the middle of the table.

“That’s not —” Sirius sighed. All the things he used to vehemently believe were true, the things he’d pushed aside for the past few weeks, had come rushing back in a torrent of doubt and uncertainty. “ _Do_ you still believe in some of the stuff they stand for? Do you consider Lucius Malfoy a friend? Just answer me that.”

He didn’t like the way Snape paused before responding. “I don’t stand for their ideologies,” Snape said at last.

“And your Death Eater pals?”

Snape paused again. “It’s complicated.”

“ _How_ can it be complicated?”

“You wouldn’t—” Snape cut himself off, ran his fingers through his hair.

“I wouldn’t what?”

When Snape next spoke, he sounded more confused and frustrated than anything else. “I’m working for Dumbledore and the Order. Against the Death Eaters. What does it matter how I _feel_ about Lucius Malfoy?”

Sirius couldn’t find an answer to that. So they fell silent again for a while, the atmosphere heavier than it had been in weeks.

They started up a tentative conversation after that, though they talked about nothing related to _The Quibbler_. Sirius bade Snape goodbye more stiffly than he used to, and walked up to bed carrying the Prophets in one hand and the magazine in the other. Today, he tossed both bundles of paper onto his bedside table and sat down on his bed to think.

What _did_ it matter if Snape considered those Death Eaters to be friends? He turned the question over in his mind. It didn’t matter, did it, as long as he was actually working for the Order. _It isn’t as if we have dinner together because we enjoy each other’s company, per se; it’s just an arrangement, since neither of us have anything better to do. If I had more people to choose from, I’d drop him anyway._ But the question wouldn’t leave his mind, kept lingering there like an itch on his back he couldn’t reach.

 _If_ he _had more choices, would he drop me?_ was one of the last thoughts that ran through his head before he fell asleep, and he recognized the hypocrisy on his part for feeling upset about the possibility. It shouldn’t matter. _And it doesn’t._

He woke up two separate times that night; he couldn’t recall having any nightmares, but he felt an aching emptiness inside each time, like he’d used to feel after going several days without any food.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things need to go downhill to go uphill, and we've only just started going downhill.
> 
> I welcome the comments and kudos with watering eyes and open arms. Thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've decided to split this story into three parts, so there will be another chapter coming. In the meantime, here is part two!

Order meetings were mostly held on weekends, due to both most of the members’ work schedules and the fact that people from the Ministry seemed to be tailing some of the more suspicious people. Meetings getting arranged for weekday evenings, at very short notice at that, was usually a sign that there was something very urgent to be discussed. Sirius’s only wish was that Dumbledore’s messages would be a little less vague, so he could know at least a bit of what the matter was in advance.

Today he racked his brains to think up the things he had heard from Snape two days before, and if he could deduce the topic of today’s meeting from any of them. But they usually only talked about lighter topics, avoiding conversing about things related to Lord Voldemort or the Order’s plans if necessary — especially since the day Snape had brought  _ The Quibbler _ .

The only substantial thing he managed to come up with was Umbridge’s continued tyranny at Hogwarts. “Every time it looks like tensions can’t possibly get any tighter, she manages to find some way to ratchet them up again,” Snape had said. That day, Sybill Trelawney had apparently burst into tears in the middle of one of her lessons, and Umbridge had promptly taken it upon herself to dismiss the class. Had she finally found a way to kick out either Trelawney or Hagrid?

That particular speculation turned out to be right; the opening topic of discussion happened to be the sacking of Professor Trelawney. As Dumbledore spoke in a neutral voice that couldn’t quite hide the grave tone behind the words, Sirius met Snape’s eye and they exchanged a small look.

Sirius had never met Trelawney. He had based his image of her on the previous Divination teacher at Hogwarts, who had been pretentious and rather clueless at the same time. Despite this unflattering bias he’d had of her, which had been somewhat confirmed by the way he had heard McGonagall talk about her once or twice, he still felt queasy at the thought that Umbridge’s attempts to sink her claws in the school were proving successful. He remembered Harry’s broomstick, and felt a small stab of fury.

As the discussion at hand was related to Hogwarts and the Ministry, and Sirius had no current knowledge of either, he was not called on to participate. He had always felt highly frustrated about that, but at least he didn’t feel a stab in his chest nowadays like he used to. He glanced over at Snape now and then; his expression mirrored Minerva McGonagall’s a few seats down, a worried frown with simmering anger just beneath.

"So, your position as top dog of Hogwarts is getting shaky, to say the least,” said Mad-Eye, when they had heard of what happened, including the appointment of Frienze the centaur, which was a move that Sirius had thought was genius.

“Yes, I think that is a fair conclusion,” said Dumbledore mildly; some of the other members exchanged uneasy looks. Mad-Eye had always been one of the very few people who were able to be that straightforward with the headmaster.

“Will Firenze be able to hold his position?” asked Arthur. “Given… what we know about Umbridge?”

Some heads turned almost instinctively towards Remus, who Sirius saw tried his best to pull off a lightly grimacing smile. He remembered Remus ranting to him about Umbridge, back when he hadn’t started avoiding him yet. And then Remus’s stern look a few weeks back, aimed at him when he had been asked about Azkaban in a room full of people. He felt a small rush of what almost felt like savage pleasure, at an unwanted spotlight being shone on Remus himself for a change.

“There is nothing our High Inquisitor can do about his working at Hogwarts,” Dumbledore was answering. “Unless she finds his classes to be unsatisfactory.”

“And that won’t happen, at least,” growled Mad-Eye. “She’d be too scared to even be near enough to him to inspect his lessons.”

People threw glances at Remus again, in ways that they apparently thought were subtle. Sirius almost immediately felt guilt, when he saw Remus stiffen.  _ It hurts him. I shouldn’t like that something’s hurting him. _

“All the same,” Mad-Eye continued, addressing Dumbledore, “she’s aiming to become headmistress, you know she is. And with Fudge behind her, even you will lose this fight, maybe sooner than you might think.”

People around the table were glancing at one another. Sirius noticed Snape was looking at Mad-Eye with unmistakable dislike, and McGonagall looked affronted. Dumbledore himself, however, was as calm as ever.

“I am indeed entertaining the possibility that I may have to step down sooner or later,” said Dumbledore. “Knowing Cornelius, it may be sprung on us when we least expect it, though I do suspect it will be soon.”

“You can’t possibly be suggesting —” McGonagall sounded incredulous and fearful.

“There is no need to worry about it now, however,” Dumbledore continued, eyeing Mad-Eye. “We shall deal with the matter when it arises.”

_ If Dumbledore has to step down from his position as Hogwarts headmaster as well, we’ll really have almost nothing to rely on.  _ Sirius thought of Harry again, and what would happen to the students at Hogwarts if Umbridge actually became head of the school.

The tone of the meeting did not get much lighter after that. The fact that Dumbledore was steadily losing his power within Hogwarts, especially given what had already happened with his position in the Wizengamot and his Order of Merlin, hung over the table like a heavy cloud the whole time. When the meeting ended, the usual flurry of chatter did not start up. People got up quietly from their seats, wearing expressions of varying degrees of fear and worry.

Sirius tried to catch Snape’s eye without it being obvious amidst the flurry of movement; Snape looked around at him, and Sirius sent him a look.  _ Stay behind? _ Snape nodded subtly, and made his way around the table into the side room.

When everyone else had left, Snape walked out of the room. He looked rather wrung out.

“Hey,” Sirius offered.

“Hm.”

“D’you want something to eat? Or drink?”

“No, it’s fine,” said Snape, moving closer to sit on the table. “I actually have to go in a couple minutes. Umbridge is getting more and more paranoid, and what the headmaster managed to pull today would have made her really furious.”

Sirius could only imagine. “Yeah, okay,” he said, trying not to sound too disappointed. He was reminded of Remus, and shook the thought out of his head. “I just wanted to check on how things were going. Given the, um…” 

“Possibility that we might all lose our jobs?” Snape’s eyebrow was raised. Sirius grinned.

“ _ You’re _ not going to lose your job,” he said.

“I actually might prefer losing my job to working under Umbridge,” said Snape, scowling.

“I thought she liked you.”

“ _ Don’t _ ,” said Snape, looking nothing short of disgusted, and Sirius laughed.

“Okay, okay, I won’t.” His tone sobered. “Is Harry doing alright?”

Snape took a moment to answer. “He… hasn’t got himself into any trouble since  _ The Quibbler _ ,” he said.

“Is that it?” Sirius said, after a beat.

Snape paused again. “Pretty much,” he said. He looked like he was debating something with himself.

“... Is there something you’re not telling me?”

“No.” It was a very convincing ‘no’, but Sirius still couldn’t shake off the feeling that there was more going on with Harry than Snape was letting on.

“Are you sure?” he pressed. “Is there anything I don’t know about?”

“No, there isn’t,” said Snape, a finality in his voice.

“Alright,” said Sirius, after another pause. He still wasn’t entirely convinced, but then Snape seemed to be in a worse mood than usual. Maybe he could coax whatever it was out of him the next time he came around. “You have to go, you said?”

“Yes.” Snape let out a heavy sigh.

“I’m guessing you don’t want to go back to Hogwarts?” A smile was creeping back into Sirius’s voice. Snape could make him do that a lot, these days.

“For the record, I never actually want to go to Hogwarts.”

Sirius snorted.

“But yes,” continued Snape, “I do want to be as far away from Umbridge as possible.”

“You could stay here for a few more minutes, if you’d like.” Sirius tried not to sound too hopeful and failed spectacularly.

“You know,” Snape looked down at him from his position, sitting cross-legged on the kitchen table, “I think I might actually do that. I probably could get away with… er, twenty more minutes?”

“Great,” said Sirius. “Should I fetch the drinks?”

“Are you  _ trying _ to get me fired?”

“I was  _ joking _ ,” said Sirius. He was laughing.

\---

To his disappointment, Sirius found he had less and less reasons to laugh as time went on.

February had moved into March with the atmosphere growing steadily heavier with each Order meeting. Sirius could tell everyone was getting more and more strained, what with Cornelius Fudge cracking down on his employees and Dolores Umbridge gaining more and more power at Hogwarts.

Snape rarely stayed that long after dinner these days, and when before he’d had time for small talk and a drink or two on weekends, now he didn’t talk much about anything. He even seemed to be skirting around questions about Harry as well nowadays, and it made Sirius certain that something was going wrong. But no matter how much he asked Snape, he couldn’t get a straight answer out of him.

The second week of March came with Sirius feeling more frustrated than he had been since the half-argument that had started because of  _ The Quibbler _ . His constant questioning about Harry for the past few visits had backfired, with Snape becoming more close-mouthed than ever.

Today, Snape arrived at a later time than usual. This alone set off Sirius’s bad mood again, and he became snappish with him almost right out of the gate. Weirdly, where Snape had never missed the chance to throw an insult back, nowadays he barely responded, just like he’d started to do shortly after Christmas. It angered Sirius to no end.

“Why,” he said forcefully, in the middle of the strained dinner, in yet another effort to get Snape to respond in some way, “do you even come around, if you aren’t going to  _ tell me _ anything?”

Snape looked up from his plate and blinked at him. “I tell you everything you ask,” he said smoothly, after a moment.

“Something’s going on with Harry,” Sirius said. “Occlumency lessons, or, or something else, I don’t know. And you’re not telling me about it.”

Snape stared at him. There was a strange look there that Sirius couldn’t quite figure out. “There is nothing going on with your godson that should in any way concern you,” he said at last. He spoke slowly, as if he was choosing his words carefully.

“ _ Everything _ going on with Harry should concern me.” The feeling of being trapped, of being sick of everyone treating him like a bomb about to go off, that he had been suffocating under a few months before, was slowly but surely rising up inside him again. In the back of his mind, he had a sense of foreboding that this discussion might lead to something neither of them would want, but he couldn’t stop his voice from rising. “There is something, then? You just said it. Why aren’t you  _ talking _ to me about it?”

There was a long pause. Sirius was breathing heavily. There was a faint frown line between Snape’s brows. “I… decided they’re not anything worth much worrying.”

“You don’t get to decide that,” said Sirius heatedly, before, “and you’re lying. You’re still lying.”

“You know yourself how quickly you departed from your safe foreign hiding place, as soon as your godson wrote you a letter telling him his  _ scar hurt _ a tinge.” Now Snape sounded frustrated. “The Hogwarts staff have got everything under control; there is nothing you can do that we can’t.”

“I should  _ know _ ,” said Sirius. He was almost shouting now. The old feelings bubbling up inside him again made it impossible to stay calm. He felt useless and pathetic. “I should know if there’s anything going on with Harry. I’m his legal guardian.”

“You yourself have proved that telling you of Potter’s problems does nothing but put both of you in more danger —”

“I’m not a child!”

“— otherwise Dumbledore would not have sent me here in the first place.”

Sirius had opened his mouth to shout some more, but no words came. The latter half of what Snape had just said was ringing inside his head. It took longer than it probably should have for him to fully process the meaning of it.  He stared at Snape, who was starting to look taken aback at Sirius’s reaction. 

A full agonizing minute passed, during which the sound of the clock ticking on the wall seemed amplified by ten times. At last, Sirius found his voice.

“You’re saying,” he sounded small and shaky and he hated it, “that you’re coming around because — Dumbledore sent you here to… to placate me?”

Snape paused. “That’s not—” he started, still looking unsure of why Sirius was reacting the way he was.

Sirius cut him off. “You’ve been giving me Prophets, you’ve been… staying for dinner, so… all so I wouldn’t snap and do something Dumbledore wouldn’t approve of?”

“You word it like that — ‘what Dumbledore wouldn’t approve of’; it’s for your safety —”

“I’m not a fucking child!” Sirius hit the table with both fists, and Snape flinched backwards. “You’ve been fucking with me all this time, Dumbledore…  _ Dumbledore _ — I’m not some — everyone acts like —”

He was vaguely aware that he was sobbing. Snape was still staring at him as if he had no idea what to do. Sirius thought of Molly Weasley, of Remus, of Dumbledore, and he hated Snape, loathed him.

“I should have fucking  _ known _ .” He let out a hysterical bark of half-laughter; he sounded half-mad. “I should have known that Dumbledore would — what else have you not been telling me?”

“I — no one’s been hiding important things from you,” Snape started again.

“Like you were doing just now? You coming in here, all ‘I want to use the potion devices’, staying for  _ dinner _ — did Dumbledore set those kits up too?”

“What — No,” said Snape. “Why are you… Why are you so upset about this?” He sounded angry, but also genuinely confused. “It’s not like you —” he cut himself off abruptly, as if he’d just said too much.

“It’s not like I what?” 

Snape did not answer.

“Get out,” said Sirius, the words horribly familiar on his tongue. Snape stared at him. “What? Worried  _ Dumbledore _ will be  _ disappointed _ ?”

Snape sat motionless, still looking at him with that expression Sirius couldn’t fathom for the life of him. He hated it, hated it and the feeling was gut-wrenching, it tore at his throat and twisted in his ribs.

“Get  _ out _ ,” he threw the two copies of the Daily Prophet at Snape. The pages separated as they flew down to the stone floor, and Sirius wiped the tears from his cheeks furiously. “I don’t want to sit here and — and eat up your fucking, your  _ lies _ . I don’t want the bloody Prophet, if you’re not — I don’t want it. Go. Get out.”

Snape had risen from his seat. He stared at Sirius for another moment before he straightened, turned around. He made his way swiftly up the stairs without another word. Sirius watched him go. The sound of Snape’s boots on the stone steps echoed painfully in his ears. 

He sat there with his fists clenched and trembling on top of the table, until he heard the front door close; he could feel the tears still running down his face. The half-eaten dinner was waiting expectantly, the dessert Snape had brought was in a small bag a little further down the table, and open pages of the Daily Prophet littered the floor.

\---

Sirius shut himself up in his room for almost the whole of the next day. Then he came to the conclusion that this was for the benefit of no one, as there was no one to come and see him anyway, so he went back down to the kitchens just before midnight. He sat down at the empty table, gazing at the space ahead before he realized what he was thinking of, at which point he got back up, seized the chair he’d been sitting in, and threw it over the table.

He had ordered Kreacher to clean everything up just before storming up to his room the previous day, though he couldn’t fully remember exactly what he’d told the elf to do. The kitchen was devoid of any indication of a visitor having been there, as far as he could tell. Once or twice he rushed back in to check the pantries, but they were empty but for the bottles of firewhisky. Even the food Snape had left behind, including the mountain of sweets from Valentine’s Day, was nowhere to be found.  _ Good. _

Or it might have been good, Sirius thought, if it weren’t for the fact that Order meetings still took place in his house. At first he wondered if Snape would even come, but four days later he swept into the kitchen right behind Minerva McGonagall. Sirius tried to shut his ears whenever Snape spoke. Snape looked and sounded perfectly fine, as if nothing had happened, and he never looked Sirius’s way. Several times during that meeting, Sirius wanted to march up to him and shake him, if only to make him look at him, break his composure.

Sirius stayed silent the whole time, and tried to avoid looking at Dumbledore as much as he could. Dumbledore did not call on him to speak, and nor did anyone else; he felt a stabbing feeling through his chest and he hated it, hated them for seeing him sullen and angry when Snape was so unshaken, hated all of them for not asking him what was wrong.

As soon as the meeting ended, he got up and marched out of the kitchen and into the sitting room; no one called him back or bade him goodbye. He sat in the uncomfortable chair and remembered Snape waiting for dinner with him all those weeks ago. And then a few minutes later he spotted him walking down the hall through the open door, and he wanted to yell at him, to make him turn around.

After the first two times he saw him, Sirius almost went through with calling Snape back after the meetings were over. He would mull it over in his head all through the actual meeting, so much that the thought felt almost like something he’d already done, because of the sheer familiarity of it. And then Dumbledore would dismiss them, and he would see Snape getting up, and he looked so utterly unaffected by  _ anything _ that Sirius’s voice would die in his throat.

March was barrelling full-steam towards April. The days all passed by in a blur, and though sometimes the individual hours would stretch out so much that it felt like time itself had stopped to mock him, he would always reach the end of the day with barely any recollection of what he had done.

And there was nothing for him  _ to _ do, no one to come visit him, no one writing to him. So he lay in his bed for longer and longer hours, his natural restlessness fading into a heavy weight that seemed to press down on him from above. He had blasted every Daily Prophet apart with his wand the day of the fight, so he didn’t even have anything to pass the time with.

Every time he went down to the kitchen, he would just walk straight back out, sometimes stopping only to grab a bottle or a pack of chips on the way. Seeing the empty clothing rack in front of the door, the ugly troll leg umbrella stand, the sitting room — he felt something lodging in his throat each time, so consistently and frequently that he wanted to scream. And he did, several times; once it set his mother’s portrait off, and he didn’t hear any of the words she was spitting at him, just remembered raised eyebrows and an insult that hadn’t come. By the time he’d managed to close the curtain over it, he was crying again.

One day after Order meetings had ended, and Sirius had watched Snape walking out of the kitchen yet again, he went up the stairs towards his bedroom, thinking about running away.  _ It would save everyone a lot of trouble. _ The same question that he hadn’t had for months came back to him, and it threatened to pull him under.  _ Why even keep me alive, if I’m here just to exist? _

And then he remembered something. He dashed up the remainder of the steps and burst into his room, skidded to his knees and dug through the drawers until he found —

Harry’s face grinned sheepishly up at him, and bold red letters announcing the exclusive interview with the Boy Who Lived were splattered across the front page.

Sirius shifted his grip on the magazine, feeling the paper under his fingers, the last thing he had left that proved Snape had ever been to visit him. And he remembered the talk he had had with Snape, the disquiet he had felt about the possibility of him thinking of the Death Eaters as friends, and his inability to put a finger on the reason why. 

And now, finally, he understood. Clutching The Quibbler so hard the pages crumpled inside his fist, he started sobbing in earnest, sitting bent over on the floor next to his bed.

He had thought, not even that long ago, that he would have absolutely no problem just dropping Snape had he had other people he could hang around. He’d assumed that constantly being on the lookout for any smile Snape failed to suppress, asking for his favorite things from the Hogwarts kitchens and debating the necessity of jam inside doughnuts, his heart lifting at a parting nod or an amused glint in usually cold black eyes, his frustration and mirth and anger and joy had all meant nothing. He had been such a fool.

He missed him. He knew that now. Not in the way he missed James, or Regulus; missing someone who was dead had a kind of finality to it, of knowing they would never return anyway. It wasn’t even the way he missed Harry; he was unreachable, at least at the moment, inside the walls of Hogwarts. Whereas when he thought of Snape, his insides roiled with an aching uncertainty and fear; he  _ could _ stop him in his tracks just a few days later, he could ask him to stay behind for a few minutes, could beg him to explain himself. But what if Snape just sneered at him and walked straight back out?

Sirius blinked through his tears down at the picture of Harry, who was now gazing up at him looking concerned. He remembered Snape flinching backwards as he’d hit the table in his anger, and a fresh wave of sobs hit him so hard he gasped. What if Snape did not want anything to do with him anymore?

Then, had he  _ ever _ wanted anything to do with him? He’d said he had only visited because Dumbledore had told him to. Even if Sirius hadn’t screamed at him to leave, had he been given a choice, would Snape have ever voluntarily come over?

Sirius recalled the utter confusion on Snape’s face at his reaction to the revelation. Where before he had just felt a searing anger every time he’d thought about it at what he had perceived as indifferent obliviousness, he now considered the possibility that he had fooled Snape as successfully as he had fooled himself. That Snape, too, had thought that Sirius kept him around for the sole reason that he had no one else.

The cut-off,  _ “It’s not like you—” _ came back to him, along with the look in Snape’s eyes that he’d been unable to decipher amidst his own explosion of emotions. He strained to remember. There had been something there that had made Sirius’s chest hurt in a quick, clenching ache. It could have been worry, or a plea; it could have been desperation.

And if that was true… maybe he did care.

Sirius lay awake for a long time that night, still holding the magazine in his hands, thinking of Snape putting it away somewhere at work to bring to him later, going down to the Hogwarts kitchens with it tucked under his arm while he asked the elves to set aside some Shepherd's pie.  _ Maybe _ , he kept thinking.  _ Just maybe _ .

He finally fell asleep after a promise to himself; the next Order meeting scheduled for five days later, he would go up to him after it ended, ask him to stay behind. As for what he’d do if Snape flat-out refused, he kicked his usual habits into action and decided simply not to think about it.

\---

“Sirius, there will be an emergency Order meeting at half past five. Albus Dumbledore is on the run from the Ministry.”

Kingsley Shacklebolt’s lynx patronus vanished in front of him as Sirius took in the words with his mouth slightly open, a half-full glass of firewhisky still in his hand. When he at last came back to himself, he poured the remainder of the drink down the sink and frantically looked around for anything else he needed to clear up. There had been an Order meeting just yesterday, and he’d thought for sure no one would be coming around. Luckily, he’d only just started drinking, so he figured he’d be able to convincingly play sober until the meeting ended.

He was still in a state of shock when people began to arrive. Everyone else looked to be thoroughly shaken as well, especially Minerva McGonagall, who marched in with Snape at her heels — Sirius’s heart lurched — and wearing an expression of raw fury.

Though no one had talked about it beforehand, once all the members had settled down, Kingsley took to the head of the table to lead the meeting.

“For those of you who don’t know the exact situation,” he said, his voice grimmer than Sirius had ever heard it, “I’ll first give you a quick rundown.”

By the time he had finished, Sirius’s mind was near blank with shock. He remembered telling Harry, Ron, and Hermione out of the Gryffindor common room fire that he thought going through with the Defense club was a good idea. Remembered convincing Remus to get Harry a set of advanced books together under the guise of him getting to study the subject himself (“Since Umbridge is apparently useless,” he’d said). 

He had never been the type to worry about getting caught. But if he had known that it would blow up in all of their faces like this… Now, with Dumbledore’s whereabouts a complete mystery and Dolores Umbridge’s takeover coming sooner than anyone could have anticipated, the idea of a student-run Defense Against the Dark Arts club was so trivial that Sirius couldn’t see how he had justified encouraging Harry to do it.

Though Dumbledore was not steering, Sirius was as invisible as always. For once, he was grateful for it; he didn’t think he’d be able to keep the guilt out of his voice.

“Dolores Umbridge is already making arrangements for her to become headmistress of Hogwarts,” Kingsley concluded. “It will be done tonight if soon, and the Minister is more than eager to go through with it.”

McGonagall looked angrier than Sirius had ever seen her — and that was saying quite a lot. He almost involuntarily glanced over at Snape, who was frowning slightly as though he was thinking. It took a beat longer than normal for him to look away, back towards the other side of the table.

“It’s absolutely outrageous that Fudge would allow such a thing,” Molly Weasley fumed. Sirius knew she was talking more about her children’s education than the larger political implications. He thought of Harry, and his heart clenched with worry.

The meeting lasted longer than usual, due to the change in leadership. By the end of it, however, they hadn’t found any satisfactory conclusion. The teachers of Hogwarts were to undermine Umbridge’s authority whenever possible without being obvious enough that they would be kicked out like Trelawney had. Those working at the Ministry were to keep an eye out and their heads down. If either of these groups noticed anything, they were to report to Kinglsey as soon as possible. 

As always, there was nothing for Sirius to do; keep the house free of doxies, he supposed. He felt as insignificant as ever, in this room full of people ready to fight to death for their cause, with absolutely nothing that he could do to contribute to it. When the Hogwarts staff was mentioned, he looked at Snape again, and saw him exchanging a look with McGonagall. Something seared inside him.

Kingsley suggested they hold a vote on the temporary organizer and head, Dumbledore having held both positions in the past. In the end, Kingsley became head and Emmeline Vance the organizer. She was a witch of few words, but as she wasn’t working anywhere near the Ministry and unsuspected by Fudge, they all agreed that if anyone was in an ideal position to collect everyone’s schedules or opinions, it was her. She made her way to the head of the table, adjusted the schedules of the next few meetings, and then Kingsley dismissed everyone.

The members started filing out, all of them looking as grim as they had when they had come inside. Sirius spotted Snape among the small crowd, talking with McGonagall in lowered voices.  _ This is too soon _ , he thought. He had thought he’d have more time to go over what he was going to say, to brace himself. 

Snape was getting further and further away from him; he made his way through the small clumps of people towards him, so as not to let him out of eyeshot. He could wait four more days. But he thought of Dumbledore, and Snape’s precarious position, and how  _ he _ might have to disappear as well. Leaving Sirius here alone for good.

“Snape,” he called loudly. He sounded slightly panicked, which he was; he’d never been good at hiding his emotions.

Snape turned, as did most of the people in the vicinity, who eyed the pair of them warily.

“I want a word.” 

Saying it was not as hard as he’d expected. What he had not anticipated was the agony of the wait right afterwards. By the time about a second had passed, he half-expected Snape to sneer at him and turn away. But Snape merely raised an eyebrow, and motioned for McGonagall to leave without him. She did, looking from him to Sirius with a frown, as though she expected them to tear each other apart as soon as they were left alone.

Sirius waited until everyone was out of the kitchen and out of earshot before he spoke. “I want to know what happened,” he said. He supposed that was as good a place to start as any.

Snape looked at him for a moment. His expression was unreadable and Sirius hated it. “You’ve just heard what happened.”

“You know what I mean,” said Sirius. His anger at Snape not keeping him properly informed on what was going on with Harry had morphed into a kind of desperation that he couldn’t keep out of his voice. _ Tell me. Tell me you care. _

It took another few seconds for Snape to answer. “Potter and Marietta Edgecombe were both brought back to their respective dormitories,” he said. “Your godson is safe and unharmed, as you’ve heard, and he will not get in trouble for violating any educational decree — for now, at least.”

“But if Umbridge really is made headmistress,” said Sirius, “she’ll find a way to get at him, you know she will.”

“She’s already trying.” Snape’s smile was sardonic, humorless. “She asked me this evening for a batch of Veritaserum.”

“What?”

Sirius’s own voice seemed to ring in his ears. He suddenly remembered how he’d almost been caught by Umbridge that one night, in the Gryffindor fire. She knew that Harry knew where he was.  _ She’s going to ask him about it. _

“It’s a futile effort regardless,” said Snape, not yet realizing where Sirius’s train of thought was heading. “No one who was in the office at the time has any idea where Dumbledore’s gone.”

Sirius could feel himself starting to shake, and desperately tried not to let it show.  _ How _ many times had people told him to be more careful? He’d never really thought it over; he’d been too restless, always had been. And he’d never considered the possibility of being caught by the Ministry, as no one  _ there _ knew about his Animagus, at least. But if this was it — if this meant he was going back —

“What’s wrong?” said Snape sharply. Sirius couldn’t answer. The nightmares he regularly had about Azkaban were rapidly incoming, slamming into him full-force. He couldn’t breathe.

“Black.” Sirius felt hands on his shoulders, and imagined them dead and rotting — gasped, tried to pull away — but then he realized they were warm. “Black. Calm yourself.”

Sirius tried to say something, but all he managed was a raspy “I —” before he started trying to gasp for air again.

“Breathe,” he could hear Snape saying. “Breathe with me.” He heard the exaggerated ins and outs of Snape’s breaths, tried to follow, tried to anchor himself there.

“Look at me,” said Snape. Sirius listened to him blindly, tried to focus, looked up at him. The black eyes were pools of calm order and they seemed to steady him. After a moment, Snape made a noise of understanding.

“You’re afraid she might question Potter about your whereabouts,” he said, in a low but matter-of-fact voice. “Is that right?”

Sirius nodded, bewildered at how Snape had found out — and then he remembered Snape’s Legilimency.

“Listen to me,” said Snape. “Your whereabouts will not be revealed, least of all to Dolores Umbridge.”

Sirius interrupted him. “I — I got caught trying —”

“ _ Listen _ .” Snape’s voice was sharp, and Sirius quietened. “She won’t be getting anything out of Potter. I gave her fake Veritaserum.”

Sirius blinked up at him. His breathing was returning to normal, and he realized he’d crumpled to the floor, Snape kneeling in front of him and still holding his shoulders steady. “You —”

“I am not an  _ idiot _ ,” said Snape. “And in any case, Potter can’t say the name of this place.”

Sirius stayed quiet as he slowly regained his composure, still trying to follow Snape’s breathing. Snape was silent, still kneeling on the ground. Sirius absorbed what he’d just heard. And he took in Snape, in front of him, calming him; a rush of warmth filled him and he dared to hope.

After a while, Snape said, “You’re alright,” in a way that made Sirius unsure if it was a question or a comment. Sirius nodded, and Snape withdrew his hands as he stood back up; Sirius’s shoulders felt suddenly barren. He pushed himself up from the ground, and all but fell into a chair Snape had pulled out for him. Snape sat down next to him as well, still looking at him.

They stayed like that for a few minutes. After a while, Sirius expected Snape to say something regarding what he’d done, tell him off about it. But he didn’t say anything. At last, Sirius found his voice.

“I shouldn’t have,” he choked out.

Snape shoved a glass of water at him; Sirius downed it in one go.

“Why aren’t you  _ saying _ anything?” he said, after a moment.

“Is…” Snape's voice had been unwavering and firm only a minute ago. Now he sounded hesitant, small, unsure. “Is there anything you want me to say?”

“I don’t,” said Sirius, “I don’t know. Telling me off for what I did, maybe? For putting Harry in danger?” The memory of their fight came back to him and his eyes threatened to water again. He blinked furiously.

Snape gazed at him. “And yourself,” he said, quietly. There was no sternness in his voice.

“Yeah, sure, and me.” He looked down at Snape’s hands; they were resting on the table, but his fingers were half-outstretched as though he had been reaching for him.  _ Tell me. _ “Did you… did you tell Dumbledore, about what happened a few weeks ago?”

Snape’s brow was furrowed. “No,” he said. “I don’t… report to him about… this.” He gestured between them.

“Don’t you?”

There was that look in Snape’s eyes again, the look that pained Sirius to see. “He asked me about it from time to time. But I… I never told him anything about — about having dinner here. Or talking. I just told him of bringing you the paper.”

They were silent for a moment while Sirius digested the words. He felt a ridiculous surge of hope he couldn’t bring himself to quell. Then Snape spoke again.

“I… apologize,” he said, in a way that suggested he was unsure of whether it was the right thing to say. Sirius looked up at him, wide-eyed. “I didn’t know you would take it like that. I thought it didn’t matter.”

“It does,” said Sirius thickly. “It does matter. Why you come here and stay with me, it matters to me. I want you to come because you  _ want _ to.” It was the first time he had said it that plainly.

He thought he saw something like shock flicker through Snape’s eyes. “Alright,” said Snape, uncertainty in his voice.

“I  _ mean it, _ ” Sirius said. Now that he’d started saying it, he couldn’t stop, or maybe he didn’t want to. “If you — if you’re coming just because Dumbledore — because Dumbledore made you…” 

“I’m not,” said Snape sharply, and Sirius blinked. “I didn’t come just because Dumbledore told me to. It started out that way, but… it’s not, anymore.”

Sirius gulped audibly, and stared in the general direction of Snape’s frame. “It’s not?”

“No.” His voice was low, but it had become firm again.

“When?” said Sirius. Snape looked at him quizzically. “When did you start coming because… because you wanted to?”

Snape frowned, looking contemplative. “There wasn’t any drastic shift, I don’t think. But I’m… fairly certain it started… the day you first asked after your godson.”

It took a moment for Sirius to remember. “‘S pretty long ago, then.” He sounded a tad too hopeful, and he knew he would have been utterly embarrassed with himself for it just a few weeks ago. Right now, he found he simply had no room for things like embarrassment. His eyes were still fixed on Snape.

“Yes, it was rather early on.” Snape paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was even lower than before. “I didn’t  _ have _ to come to your house for the painkiller, you know. That day I… first stayed for dinner.” Sirius stared. Snape looked profoundly uncomfortable. “I wanted to come here, over Hogwarts. Felt… safer.”

“Yeah?” Sirius let out a choked half-laugh.

“Mm.”

Their eyes met. Snape was gazing at him in a way Sirius had thought he’d spotted sometimes out of the corner of his eye, but then he’d turn his head and the look would be gone. Now Snape seemed to flinch a little, but he did not look away.

After some time, Sirius spoke again. “I apologize too,” he said. “For getting angry at you like that.”

Snape blinked, and his smile was small and sad. “I understand your frustration.”

“I just… I know,” said Sirius, and it felt like letting go of a weight, admitting that. “I know I’ve been stupid, a lot, and I — I still think about doing stupid things, I know that. But… I feel so…” His voice was starting to break, and he let the tears come this time. 

“I feel so  _ useless _ ,” he said, and saying it made him feel like it was true. “I can’t do anything, stuck here, and I know — I know it’s for the best, but… But everyone treats me — like —”

He felt a hand on his, and looked down again to see Snape’s long fingers shifting to hold it. Snape’s voice was closer than before when he next spoke. “They probably don’t know what to say, is all.”

“I want to be helpful.” Sirius pushed the words out between sobs, looking fixedly down at their hands on the table in an attempt to steady himself. “I want to do something. Every meeting, every day everything’s going to shit and I can’t… I can’t do anything and —”

“We all feel that way,” said Snape, “to some extent. I know it’s harder for you, but the rest of us are as powerless to stop these major shifts as you are. We all feel we should be doing something more.”

“You — you’re doing more than  _ anyone _ , except for Dumbledore, maybe, but…”

Snape paused, took a deep breath. “Every time I report to the Dark Lord, I stand just ten feet away from him,” he said. His voice was low and quiet. “And each time, I’m reminded of the things he’s done. And that I have my wand right there in my pocket, but I just stand there and talk and then walk away. I…” Snape’s voice wavered, and Sirius blinked away his tears to stare at him. “I’ve never felt more inadequate in my life, than I do these days.”

Sirius couldn’t think of anything to say. So he turned his hand on the table over to hold Snape’s. The fingers were thin and bony and Sirius squeezed them.

At last he said, “You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t feel like that, it’s not…”

“And neither should you,” said Snape. “You’re not staying inside because you’re incompetent, or cowardly.”

Sirius remembered Christmas, and what Snape had said to him back then; that felt like a few decades ago now.

“Okay,” he said at last. “And… could you tell me about Harry, at least? What’s going on with him?”

Snape nodded, sighing before he spoke. “It’s just that… he’s not progressing much,” he said. “At all, actually. He keeps seeing these visions through the Dark Lord’s mind. And you know we don’t have an — an amicable relationship, and I don’t know what I have to do to get him to  _ practice _ more.”

“Oh,” said Sirius. “It’s getting worse?”

“It’s hard to get much worse than the snake incident, to be honest,” said Snape, “but it’s not getting better, that’s for sure.”

“Maybe you could just… tell him what could happen if he doesn’t try?”

“I did that the  _ first lesson _ .”

“Yeah, but, you know… Really hammer it home? You know he has a weak spot for people he’s close to.”

Snape looked at him for a moment. “Alright,” he said slowly. “I’ve also been thinking maybe I’d been going about it the wrong way, and… I suppose trying that would be better than nothing. Thank you.”

Sirius started, then grinned. “Yeah.”

They stayed sitting like that for a while, still holding onto each other’s hands — Sirius couldn’t have said whether it had been just a few minutes or half an hour — and then Snape cleared his throat.

“I’ve… got to go now,” he said. “Papers to grade.”

“Right.” Sirius stood up; his legs were still a little shaky, but he steadily gained more control over them as he walked with Snape out of the kitchen and up the stone steps.

They stopped in front of the doors as Snape pulled down his outer robes and shrugged into them. He was frowning slightly.

“What are you thinking about?”

Snape looked over at him. “Trying to think up a sufficient alibi, if Umbridge corners me tonight and asks me where I’ve been.”

“Doesn’t she trust you?”

Snape made a face. Sirius remembered the last time he’d said something like that, laughed.

“She does,” Snape said. “More than most of the staff, anyway. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to think of something just in case. I think I might’ve been going around with Minerva too much for her taste.”

“Er… Say you’ve been out… house hunting,” suggested Sirius.

Snape let out a snort of laughter. “Where did that come from?”

“Dunno.” Sirius barely suppressed his own laugh; he could feel it bubbling up inside him like it hadn’t done for weeks. “It’s so out of left field that she might just believe it, who knows.”

“It’s not as if I don’t need a new house in any case.” A residue of surprised amusement was still visible on Snape’s face as he reached for the door. “Maybe I’ll actually say that.”

“Glad to be of service.”

Sirius walked Snape out to the front steps. They paused for a moment, looked at each other. Then Sirius raised his hand and waved.

“Bye, then.”

Snape seemed to hesitate, then he gave a short wave back. It was the first time he had done it. “Bye,” he said. He turned to go.

“You know,” started Sirius, and Snape looked back at him. “I… I really like having you over. I think I liked having you over from the start.” He felt like folding into himself as he said it. It felt too open and vulnerable; he’d never said anything like that in his life, as far as he could remember. But he saw Snape’s eyes widen, and then it didn’t matter.

“You…”

“That’s why it mattered to me,” Sirius said, “why you were visiting. I wanted to see you, and I needed to know if — if it was like that for you too.”

“It was,” Snape said quickly. “Is.”

“I know.”

Snape looked at him, nodded slowly. He turned again towards the front steps, then turned back. “I’ll come around tomorrow, if that’s alright?”

“Yeah,” said Sirius, maybe a bit too quickly. “Yeah, I’d… I’d like that. A lot, actually.” He grinned sheepishly, and Snape nodded, a warm gleam in his dark eyes. Sirius watched him go; after the weeks of solitude, the smile he wore now was starting to hurt his face muscles.

\---

The next day happened to be when Sirius got all the telling off that he had thought he would get the day before. Snape asked him extensively about every way he’d been communicating with Harry; Sirius told him everything but for the mirror, as he felt that didn’t count anyway.

“I also might’ve… told them I was all for the whole Defense club thing,” he admitted, getting ready for Snape’s nostrils to flare; he was not disappointed.

To his surprise, Snape did not berate him as much as he’d expected for encouraging Harry, Ron and Hermione to form Dumbledore’s Army. His problem seemed to lie more with the fact that Sirius hadn’t told anyone in the Order about it. It was the same difference, he supposed, but it made his mood lift to think Snape didn’t exactly seem to disapprove of what he had egged Harry on to do. 

Then again, that could have just been because of just how much he loathed Umbridge. As soon as he’d stepped inside Grimmauld Place that day, Sirius had done nothing more than say, “Has Um—” before Snape had thrust the day’s Prophet at him, almost seething with hatred.

But overall, Snape was in a rather better mood than he perhaps ought to have been. He wasted no time in telling Sirius why once he’d finished scolding him, and they started eating.

“ _ Someone _ ,” said Snape, “let loose an enormous batch of enchanted fireworks in the school. Never-before-seen, original products. Umbridge had to run around trying to get rid of them all day.”

“Ah,” said Sirius. He had a shrewd idea of who the ‘someone’ might be. “And I suppose none of the rest of the staff knew how to do that?”

“Not one.” There was a malicious glint in Snape’s eye, and Sirius burst out laughing.

“Tell me about them,” he said, eager to hear about it in as much detail as possible. “Do they explode when you hit them with a Vanishing Charm? Filibuster’s products do that.”

“No,” said Snape. “But they do multiply themselves by about a dozen. They explode when you try to Stupefy them.”

“Genius.”

Snape told Sirius about the three separate times he’d sent a student to call for Umbridge’s help, including the Catherine wheel that had whizzed about in his classroom while he sent a gleeful fourth-year Ravenclaw to notify Umbridge of the disturbance, culminating in it blowing up right over her head and setting her hair on fire.

“Luckily it wasn’t a brewing day, so none of the students got hurt,” mused Snape, when he was done retelling the scene in detail.

“Wouldn’t all that, you know, make her act less favorably towards you?” chortled Sirius.

“Who needs me when you can have Filch?” said Snape drily. “Believe me, I would have called for her a few more times if I hadn’t restrained myself.”

“Oh, McGonagall must have had a field day too.” Sirius remembered her furious face from the day before.

“She’s not as above pettiness as she seems at first glance, no,” agreed Snape. He talked of the laugh they’d had in the staff room together after classes, and the episodes each teacher had told; it still felt rather strange for Sirius to hear Snape talk about his colleagues like that, when they’d once both been students under most of them.

The visit ended after they had a drink together for the first time in what felt like forever, despite it being a school night. Snape promised to come over the next day as well, and they bade each other goodnight, both of them in high spirits.

Snape was late the next evening. Sirius paced up and down the length of the kitchen table, growing restless. He had just started to grow properly concerned when he heard the front door opening in the distance, and darted up the stairs and through to the hall.

“Where were you?” he called, approaching Snape, who was hanging up his robes as usual. “I was starting to get worried.”

Snape didn’t answer, and as he turned, Sirius saw that his expression was grim and brooding.

“What’s the matter?”

Snape looked at him as though he was seeing something beyond him. Sirius felt his heart sink, without knowing why. 

“We need to talk,” Snape said, after a moment.

Sirius wondered what could possibly have gone wrong, as they made their way down to the kitchen. Was it something he’d said, or done? But they’d been perfectly fine the day before. Or had something else happened, at Hogwarts, perhaps? Was it Harry?

They set the bags down on the table as usual, and Sirius walked around the length of the table to sit facing Snape.

“What’s wrong? What is it?” he said.

Snape hesitated, still looking utterly lost; Sirius didn’t know what to make of it.

“Is it Harry? Is he in trouble?”

“Yes, and… no,” said Snape, slowly.

“Did something happen in Occlumency lessons? Did he have a vision?”

“Not a vision.” Snape looked like he’d rather talk about anything else, which Sirius felt was a bit unfair, seeing as he’d been the one who had said they needed to talk. “He… I had to leave the office because of an emergency, and I told him to go back to his dormitories as well. And he… he looked in the Pensieve.”

Sirius’s eyebrows shot up. “What did you put in there? Did he find anything out he’s not supposed to?”

“Not related to the war.” Snape let out a stressed sigh, and ran his fingers through his hair. “Do you remember,” he said at last, slowly and hesitantly, “the day that we… the Defense Against the Dark Arts O.W.L.?”

Sirius blinked, and then he remembered. A sense of cold dread filled him.

“I caught him while he was watching that, and pulled him out. I didn’t really… say anything, just stood there. And he ran out.”

Sirius could just imagine the expression that must have been on Snape’s face.

“You’re not here to talk about Harry, are you?” he said quietly.

Snape said nothing. Just raised his head to look at him, and nodded.

“I…” Sirius remembered. The more he thought, the more it came back to him. Feeling particularly bored that day, sandwiched between two exams. Seeing Snape’s scrawny form straightening up from the bushes and getting a rush of excitement. Snape on the ground; Lily, coming to his defense, for what would be the last time. Lifting Snape into the air to expose his underpants, the crowd laughing, the slur Snape had shouted, confirming all Sirius’s suspicions of him.

And now Snape sat across from him, more grown and powerful than Sirius could have ever imagined back then, and, just now, looking as desperately lost as he had been that night in front of the Gryffindor portrait hole, nearly twenty years ago.

Sirius didn’t know what to say. Again, he remembered the agitation in Snape’s eyes when he’d pulled his wand out on him at Christmas, and him jumping backwards from the table when Sirius had slammed his fists onto it.

“I’m not —” he started hesitantly.

Snape cut across him. “Why did you do it?” he said. His eyes were fixed on his interlocked fingers, and his voice was low and slightly shaky. “Why did you do those things, back then?”

Sirius had expected something like that question to come up the moment he’d realized the topic at hand, but he hadn’t known it would be brought up so soon. He was utterly unprepared. “I…” He cleared his throat.

“I just want you to be… honest,” said Snape. He sounded as though he was bracing himself.

_ But what if you hear it and then don’t come back? _ Their first falling out had only been mended a couple of days ago, and that had been because Sirius himself had been reminded of his own bitter hatred. What if Snape heard him talk, and just up and left, having recalled all the reasons he hated Sirius? He could not afford to go through it, he just couldn’t.

But he couldn’t lie, either. Not with Snape looking like that in front of him, not with their opening up of two days ago. Him lying would do nothing but set them back. He had nowhere else to turn.

And so he told him. 

He told him of the ride on the train, and the bespectacled boy he’d befriended just a few minutes before; the first friend he had ever made. Of the disparaging comment his new friend had made towards Slytherin house, the stab of panic he’d felt in his heart, his on-the-spot talk of breaking his family’s tradition when before he’d only imagined of being sorted into other houses. But most of all, of his resentment of the big-nosed, skinny boy’s defiance and disdain. Of that boy getting to be so sure of himself when he could do nothing but insult that assuredness in the hope that maybe, if he did that, he would be placed in a house his friend might approve of.

And he told him of the Sorting, and his glee and fear at becoming a Gryffindor, his expectations proven right when the scrawny boy he’d laughed off his compartment on the train was sorted into the den of Snakes. 

Every time he got a disappointed letter from home, or worse, radio silence, within the next few days he would have classes with the Slytherins and see him there. The boy wasn’t supposed to look like he belonged, but he did; he was confrontational and quick to anger, foul-mouthed, quick to defend himself.  _ Mother would have called him uncultured  _ — but somehow, some way, he stubbornly and undeniably  _ belonged _ . When he, Sirius, could never shake off the feeling that he was an impostor in his own skin.

And that boy — that boy who was becoming a constant reminder of everything he hated about himself — he had the  _ nerve _ to stay friends with a  _ Gryffindor _ when his own parents had told him never to cross paths with them. A Muggle-born Gryffindor at that, and eventually his best friend’s object of interest. The reasons to hate him had piled up one by one. But if he’d taken a proper look at them, he might have seen that they had all been derived from the reasons he hated himself, twisted up to point at someone else in order to make it hurt less.

He told Snape of how, every time he cornered him, humiliated him, hexed him from behind his back, he had felt like he was ridding himself of his own unmistakable qualities that signaled everything bad in a pureblood Slytherin, like it was a way of actively rejecting them. And he knew he had those things he so viciously loathed, from his looks all the way to the vindictive pleasure he had felt whenever he tripped Snape up, made the crowd laugh.

And he had steadily gone too far, and he’d known it for a while but he hadn’t cared, and maybe he hadn’t wanted to. He’d crossed a line, then another, and another, and no one had stopped him — and he knew that was just an excuse, he  _ knew _ that, he told him. Eventually he became numb to the notion that a line even existed. No one had seemed to care for the greasy-haired Slytherin boy but himself.

He kept talking until his throat was dry and his voice cracked, and he paused for a few seconds. He’d been looking down at the table in front of him for the past few minutes; he couldn’t quite bring himself to look at Snape.

Then a hand came into his line of vision. Snape had wordlessly poured water into a glass and pushed it towards him. He looked up instinctively, and their eyes met. Snape held his gaze, and wordlessly gestured at the glass. And it was then that Sirius burst into tears, for the second time in three days. Snape looked startled, his arms reaching instinctively towards him; Sirius clutched at them as he tried to gulp his tears down.

In between his ragged breaths, he continued to speak, staring down at his own hands holding on to Snape’s sleeves as though they were lifelines. He told Snape of the Whomping Willow, how he hadn’t thought much of it at all, even years and years later. How he had loathed Snape’s hard resolve and fierce persistence, when most others in his place would have simply given up. He had wanted to make him give up, wanted to see him break, and he could barely discern his own words over the painful sobs that clawed at his throat.

When he finally got to the thing that had prompted Snape to confront him, he needed to take several deep breaths to calm down enough to continue.

“And I hadn’t  _ learned _ ,” he said, “of course I hadn’t, I knew it was wrong but I ignored it and tried to… I thought I was — that I was —  _ right _ . That you… that you —”

_ Deserved it _ . He couldn’t say it, not like how he’d been able to spit it out without a second thought only two years earlier. He had had a boy in his mind back then, the symbol of everything he’d hated. And now a man sat in front of him, a man with that same large hooked nose and those same black eyes, with all the resolve and persistence he had had as a child, with the same defiance and stubborn sense of belonging of that eleven-year-old boy Sirius had thought he’d known; he hadn’t been able to break any of that after all.

Snape stood — Sirius flinched, thinking he was about to walk out — but he made his way around the table, passing the entrance by, to pull out a chair next to Sirius’s and sit down. Sirius reached out for him, and Snape held out his hands.

“I just needed to hear it,” said Snape, after a while. “I needed to hear it from you. Maybe we could have done this later, what with… what happened recently, but… today I just felt like I couldn’t put it aside any longer.”

Sirius nodded. Snape slid one of his hands free from Sirius’s grip and reached for his wand, conjuring a handkerchief and handing it over. Sirius clumsily wiped his face and said, “‘M sorry.”

“It’s alright.”

“No, I meant —” the handkerchief flapped as he gestured at the space between them. “I was talking about what I did. What I just told you.”

“I know you were,” said Snape plainly. Sirius stared at him, and hoped. “I don’t… forgive you, not yet,” he continued. “But I… I can see. And it’s alright.”

“And you… you will?” Incredulous hope he couldn’t have hidden if he’d wanted to was filling his voice. “Forgive me?”

Snape looked at him. “I don’t know,” he said, with a sigh. “But I… I think I might. One day.”

Sirius let out a shuddering breath, and Snape’s fingers tightened ever so slightly over his own. Then he thought of how he’d thrown the paper at him a couple of weeks ago. The fear he thought he’d seen in Snape’s eyes. And he couldn’t push it aside either, he needed to get everything out now. “And I’m sorry about how I… acted, sometimes, recently. If I reminded you of — of back then, I’m sorry.”

Snape blinked. “Okay,” he said softly.

“I don’t hate you.” Sirius realized he had never actually said it out loud. “I like you. I really do. I don’t feel how I felt back then, anymore.”

There was a pause. “Okay,” Snape said again. Then, “I like you too.”

Sirius let out a sound between a sob and a laugh. “You’re impossible,” he said after a moment. Snape raised an eyebrow at him, but Sirius didn’t elaborate. Didn’t need to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there's two of the big issues resolved almost back-to-back! There are some inconsistencies about the dates and days of the week in canon, and I decided just to stick with how it is in canon for minimal confusion.
> 
> There's one more part left, and it shall be filled with considerably more fluff than the first two. It'll take a longer time to upload than part 2, but you can expect it to arrive sometime next week.
> 
> Comments and kudos are loved and cherished, as always <3 Thank you so much for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is at last, the final part! Thank you all for your patience, I hope you enjoy the read.
> 
> (I made some edits on 2020/08/03, to improve the pacing in some scenes <3)

The Easter holidays came, which was good news for them both, as Snape could come around more often and for longer hours. But as members of the Order regularly filtered in and out during weekends, and also right before and after work hours, Snape mostly avoided visiting during those times. At first, Sirius didn’t know how to feel about that. Then one day he just decided to ask him about it; they were well past the stage of skirting around uncomfortable topics.

“Ah,” said Snape, laying down his spoon, “I was wondering when you would bring that up. I was worried you’d read too much into it.”

“So?” said Sirius, setting his elbow on the table pointedly. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

Snape laughed. Sirius had missed that; he was currently seizing every opportunity he had these days to either coax or surprise it out of him.

“I just…” Snape sighed lightly. “I’m sure you’ve noticed, but I’m not… on great terms with all the members.”

Sirius could see where this was going. “Moody?” he said. Mad-Eye’s electric blue eye would follow Snape around more than necessary, so much that you would notice it even if you weren’t paying any attention.

“Among others,” said Snape, frowning at his food. “I’d rather keep out of their sight when possible. Though,” he paused, and looked up at Sirius, “if you want — I could just ignore all that.”

“I actually would like that,” admitted Sirius — a small smile twisted Snape’s mouth — “but you don’t have to do that for my sake. There are people dropping in from time to time anyway, so it’s not like I’m here all alone during those times.”

If he was being entirely truthful, these days he sometimes felt he’d rather be alone than be a host for most of the Order. As the post-Christmas workload lessened and, more importantly, as Dumbledore’s reliable presence was absent, more members were starting to come over to headquarters outside meeting hours. Sometimes they talked about Order business, but Sirius suspected they mostly came around because of a general uneasiness, which seemed to be the emotional state of everyone just now. 

Molly Weasley rarely came over and for that he was rather grateful, but Arthur never seemed to know what to say to him, and ended up being overly kind, almost as if he were talking to one of his nephews or something. Mad-Eye kept bringing up the original Order whenever he was within earshot of any of its members, Tonks was family but that only served to make their conversations more awkward, and Minerva McGonagall would do little more than nod in his direction before doing whatever she’d come to do. He mostly shut himself up in his room when people came around, and quickly found that no one bothered to seek him out.

Out of all of them, though, Remus was steadily becoming one of the most uncomfortable members to be in the vicinity of. The closeness they had once had had become a standard they could never dream to reach, and both of them had always been the type to hold onto their bitterness. 

He told Snape about that too; he told him most everything these days. That always made him feel better about things, and Snape always seemed to know what to say, and perhaps what not to.

In turn, Snape told him, or for the majority vented to him, about the things going on at Hogwarts. He had also started telling Sirius about Harry each time he came over. Most of the time it was small things, or even almost nothing at all, as there were no classes. (“Today I didn’t see him at all except for during meals.”) But Sirius soaked it all up. It helped him remind himself that his godson was at Hogwarts, not in the best of circumstances but still safe and with friends accompanying him.

“Since the Quibbler article,” Snape said one day, just a few days into Easter break, “public sentiment towards him has shifted significantly.”

That was surprising. “Why?” Sirius remembered again that same magazine alleging he was a ‘singing sensation’. “I mean, why do people believe the Quibbler? The Prophet’s been having a go at him since last summer.”

“The mass breakout, I think, disillusioned some people,” said Snape. “You remember the Ministry’s version of events. They were flimsy to say the least.”

Sirius did remember. The silver goblet he’d thrown at the wall that day had left a dent in one of the cabinets. Every time he spotted it, he had wanted to apologize to Snape, even though he hadn’t even been there to see it.

“So The Quibbler comes out with an exclusive interview and, whatever the Prophet led people to believe, the story was consistent and filled in the blanks the Prophet had left empty.”

“So the mass breakout of all things has a silver lining.” Sirius let out a laugh. “People might be more open to hear what the Order has to say now, then?”

“The problem’s Dumbledore.” Snape grimaced.

“You haven’t seen him still?” Sirius had not expected Dumbledore to notify him even if he returned. Sometimes not having Dumbledore at Order meetings felt almost freeing — he would mentally slap himself for thinking that.

“No.” Snape looked troubled, as everyone in the Order did these days when talking about the headmaster. “And everything that happened was so public, so some people still believe what they’re being spoon-fed by the Ministry. Anyway,” he said, getting back on track, “what I was trying to say was, he has more people at Hogwarts who believe him now as well.”

Harry hadn’t told him about people not believing his story back at Hogwarts. A few weeks ago, Sirius might have wanted to keep that to himself. Now, he told Snape with minimal hesitation, and if Snape was surprised, he didn’t show it. 

“Even some of his fellow Gryffindors were on the Ministry’s side of things at the start of term. But a few of them started coming around after the article, and now almost the whole school seems to have done.”

“That’s great,” said Sirius, quelling the anger he felt towards those students. How much disapproval had they shown, that the staff had noticed the whole thing?

Having taken note of Sirius’s obliviousness of what Harry’s life had been like this school year, Snape had taken to telling him about those things he thought Sirius might not know. Sirius felt like he was constructing knowledge of his godson’s life, using the things Snape told him as building blocks. He hoped it showed in his face how grateful he was each time, as he wasn’t entirely sure he would be able to get all the words out without crying again.

\---

“I wanted to ask you something.”

They were in the sitting room. Sirius had suggested putting cushioning charms on the chairs, and Snape had elongated the legs of the small table and was drawing up assignment plans on it. He looked up from where he’d been crossing some words out with his quill.

“Hm?”

“Are you still teaching Harry Occlumency?”

Snape nodded slowly.

“What’s it like?” said Sirius after a moment. Snape paused before answering.

“It’s…” He sighed. “After what happened with the Pensieve, I don’t talk a lot. I’ve cut back on the — the unpleasant comments as well, as a kind of side effect. He’s been keeping mostly quiet too. He’s still not practising, though.”

“Oh.”

“And it’s harder to motivate him now I don’t even goad him into doing better. I say almost nothing except for ‘Legilimens’ these days.”

Sirius sighed. “It must be hard,” he said, “for both of you.”

He didn’t ask Snape to talk to Harry about it; he knew Snape would have done that if he’d needed to. Perhaps he was learning about not talking about certain things from Snape himself. He could tell Snape was somewhat thankful about that.

“He’ll come around,” Sirius said. “Just… don’t lower his confidence too much, and then who knows?”

Snape looked at him. Before, Sirius might have noticed nothing but an unreadable wall in those eyes, but now he saw a torrent of emotions, swirling just under the surface. It was strange, the things you started seeing once you really started looking.

“Thanks,” said Snape quietly.

\---

The end of the Easter holidays came faster than Sirius would have liked. As Snape had been coming over as early as lunchtime, his absence would mean more lagging hours of solitude. The last day of the holidays, Snape brought along a bundle of pamphlets with the day’s lunch, handing them over to Sirius before unwrapping the food.

“ _‘So you think you’d like to work in Muggle relations’..._ Ah, career pamphlets! I remember these.”

“I thought you might like a look at them,” said Snape as he sat down.

Sirius sifted through the various career options as he ate. “ _Banking_ ,” he said in disgust, tossing aside the pamphlet featuring a large picture of a building that resembled Gringotts.

“What’s so wrong with banking?”

Sirius looked up at Snape in mock incredulity. “Would _you_ trust me with your gold?”

“Mm, I’ll give you that.”

Sirius took the time to grimace at and comment on several other pamphlets. “Charms mastery,” he said, turning over the dull silver-coloured paper.

“Almost no one wants to pursue that,” said Snape neutrally. “The popularity levels are about the same as when we were in school. Some don’t have a choice, though. Jobs, and all that.”

“I didn’t know the popularity levels of different masteries when we were in school,” said Sirius.

“Of course you didn’t,” said Snape, throwing him a mock glare. “But not all of us have the abundant options of a top-of-the-class student.”

“ _You_ were good.”

“I was rubbish in some subjects. And I have to advise all kinds of students now, too.”

“Okay,” said Sirius, suddenly businesslike, “so I’m guessing Defense Against the Dark Arts is at the top.”

“Yes,” said Snape. “Though its popularity is still steadily dropping because of the Hogwarts teacher problem. The curriculum’s pretty much in shambles at this point.”

“Oh, right. And…” Sirius continued, frowning. “I can’t — I just can’t think of anything that could be second.”

“Potions.”

“Potions?” said Sirius incredulously.

“Employment rates in Potions-related fields are higher than for any of the other ones,” said Snape. “And there are more job options. It’s almost overtaken Defense now.”

“And I bet you’re real proud of yourself for that.” Sirius grinned. Snape gave a half-shrug by way of answer, and it made him let out a bark of laughter.

He glanced over several more pamphlets, moving them to the side. Then he stopped for a moment, before picking one of them up.

It was the pamphlet on the Auror office. The cover presented a blown-up version of the print on the Auror badges, the same print he’d always expected he’d wear on his chest. The background was a dark plum, the colour of the robes he’d gotten to wear once, back when he’d gotten his uncle Alphard’s friend to take him on a visit to the Auror offices during his time as a trainee. 

The smaller Ministry logo on the top right was the same symbol as the one on the bottom of his Wanted posters.

“You wanted to be an Auror.”

Snape’s voice was somewhere between a question and a statement and Sirius looked up. He realized he had forgotten about his food for a few moments now.

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t know that,” said Snape. “Though I suppose I should have guessed.”

“What makes you say that?” He still hadn’t shaken the Ministry logo from his mind, and instantly hated himself for saying the words more harshly than he’d intended.

“Considering the circumstances.” Snape shrugged. His voice held no venom; he hadn’t even raised his eyebrows. “The war. And I assume you’d have gotten top marks in your N.E.W.T.’s.”

Sirius paused. “Yeah,” he said quietly, and he hoped he had properly conveyed an apology in his tone. “I didn’t… think of anything else I wanted to be, really.”

Three years of post-graduate training. It had been tedious, though it had at least been more challenging than Hogwarts. There had been little reward during that time, but he had always had James to fall back on, and every year they would read the small number of names who had been taken on for the actual office, pasted on walls throughout their building come the end of November. Two or three names at most, each year. They had never doubted that both of theirs would be on those announcements, when they’d check them the morning of the twenty-second of November, 1981.

A day that had never come.

He often wondered these days if he’d have done things differently. If he’d had an inkling. Not even just the big decisions anymore. Smaller things. Like blowing James off to spend lunch break “with a date”, when he was really going to an empty room to practice spells. He’d never wanted James to know exactly how desperate he was. He wondered if he could have been more open. If James would have understood. He thought about those laughably trivial things.

“Well,” said Snape, and it snapped him out of it. “If it makes you feel any better, the last thing I’d have thought of becoming is a Hogwarts professor.”

Sirius laughed again. He didn’t have to force it that much, to his surprise. “I can imagine.”

Snape stayed long after lunch, only going out to make a quick trip to a local food place to get their dinner. They didn’t talk about career options again that day, and Sirius stacked all the pamphlets in a pile on the corner of the table along with the Daily Prophet. Not that they needed more topics of discussion; they were getting good at talking about absolutely nothing. Sirius liked that.

After a few drinks, Snape left near midnight, and Sirius tossed the Auror pamphlet into the bin before carrying the rest of the bundle up to his bedroom. There he shuffled through the pile before finding what he was looking for. He settled down on his bed, and read the pamphlet on Potions mastery from cover to cover, recalling the small glint in Snape’s eyes as he’d talked about it. He wondered if Snape felt the same about Potions mastery as he did about Auror training. He digested the words and illustrations and pictures on each page, and after he was done he sat there for a while, staring at the back cover. And he thought of lost chances, and of newfound choices.

Would he have done things differently? He found that, just now, he couldn’t say.

\---

The next day, he woke at a later time than usual. He lazed about in bed for a while, reading the Daily Prophet he hadn’t managed to look over the day before, and at half past twelve took his stomach growling as a cue to trudge down to the kitchen.

Snape had left several salad wraps in the cabinets; he grabbed one of them, undid the Stasis charm, and dragged a plate onto the table before sitting down. Kreacher was nowhere to be seen, and the house was quiet but for a distant click-clacking noise that was probably Buckbeak moving around upstairs. He hadn’t done a house cleanup since Christmas, he realized as he ate. Maybe he should get around to doing it today, as it would be several hours before Snape would pop in.

After he’d finished the wrap and ate another one, he pulled out his wand and cleansed the plate clean before levitating it back inside the cabinet. He then wondered where he should start. His room would be as good a place as any, he decided.

The short clean-up during Christmas season had seemingly eradicated all of the nasty things that had started to breed inside the house, leaving it spotless. Sirius now discovered that a couple weeks’ fierce cleaning could not possibly combat years upon years’ giving ground. He found everything from house spiders to an alarming number of doxy eggs just in the room next to his. Cursing Kreacher under his breath, he tried the best he could to tackle everything, and by the time he exited that room it was already nearing two O’ clock.

He moved on to the next room, getting more and more wary. He cleaned up with minimal surprises this time, but he left the cabinet, which was trembling slightly, for later. He strongly suspected that the doxies had bred again, and was quite sure he couldn’t fight them on his own, and in any case he didn’t have any doxycide. Maybe he’d ask Snape to come around with some tomorrow, he thought, smiling to himself at the notion of Snape having to help him with the cleaning he had so often goaded Sirius about.

It was as he was moving out of that room when he heard it. A voice, calling his name, way down from what he thought would be the first floor.

Harry’s voice.

He yelled back and dashed downstairs, his wand still out and ready. Was Harry in trouble? Why was he here? And how was he here? He remembered asking Snape why he didn’t just come by the Floo, and Snape telling him that Umbridge had blocked Floo transportation in all the fireplaces in the castle but her own. Amidst his mounting worry, something like pride erupted in a corner of his mind.

He skidded to a halt in front of the fireplace, brushed his hair out of his eyes. Harry’s head was in the fireplace, and he hadn’t changed a bit from the day he had last left Grimmauld Place for Hogwarts, except perhaps for his hair being a little longer. Sirius’s heart caught in his throat at the sight of him.

“Harry. What’s wrong? What happened?”

Harry took a bit longer to answer than he would have liked. Every passing moment his dread seemed to grow.

“I’m not in danger or anything,” he said at last. “It’s not like that. I just — wanted to talk to you — about my dad.”

Sirius stared. A part of him, the same part of him that had berated himself for encouraging Harry to go with the Defense club plan, had risen to the surface. “What was so urgent about that that you came here?”

“Well,” said Harry, looking simultaneously like he didn’t want to talk about it and needed to get it out as quickly as possible, “you know I’ve been doing Occlumency lessons with Snape.”

Sirius nodded, wondering where this was going — and then it clicked.

“And I looked inside the Pensieve —”

“Er — yeah, Harry,” Sirius cut across him. He had no idea how to go about it. “I… think I know what you came here for. You watched a memory of Snape’s, didn’t you?”

Harry’s eyes widened. “How do you know that?”

Sirius paused. “I heard about it.”

“From…” Harry looked shocked. “From who? I didn’t tell _anyone_.”

“Er,” said Sirius. “How much time do you have, exactly?”

“Dunno, not much,” said Harry. “Fifteen minutes, I think?”

“Right,” said Sirius. So they had even less time than he’d expected. How was he supposed to explain how he knew of the Pensieve incident? The last time Harry had seen him and Snape together, they’d been ready to duel each other in the kitchen of a house full of people.

“Did you hear from a professor or something?” Harry was starting to sound a little put off. Sirius remembered him being deeply resentful of the Order tailing him during the summer. So he couldn’t even lie and say _that_ without upsetting Harry.

“Well, yeah,” he said slowly, still unsure whether telling Harry would be the best idea. But he couldn’t think of any other options, and the time Harry had somehow earned for a talk was running out fast. “I actually… I heard about it from Snape.”

And he told him, briefly, about how Snape had been coming around. He remembered that Snape had said he’d only reported to Dumbledore about giving Sirius the news, and decided that was the best way to go about it for now. They didn’t have enough time for him to bring up just how much more Snape was doing for him besides bringing newspapers.

“Oh,” said Harry, when he had finished. Sirius had the distinct impression that Harry thought he and Snape still loathed each other; he looked almost sorry for Sirius. And seeing that Harry thought he didn’t like Snape coming, it suddenly felt _wrong_ , like he’d done a disservice to Snape somehow. 

“It’s not like what you think,” he said, without thinking it through. “It’s not bad.”

“Yeah,” Harry said slowly, looking unconvinced.

“No, really.” Sirius didn’t know why he was saying this, when he’d just decided a moment ago that they didn’t have enough time for it. But he remembered Snape telling him about how Harry was doing, how observant he was about the little things in his life. He remembered him saying quietly, the day they had made up, that he and Harry weren’t on the best of terms, and the way his tone had suggested he felt less than happy about the fact. He couldn’t just leave Harry feeling more antagonistic towards him, not when Snape had done so much for him, and told him so many things.

“We’re on better terms now, actually,” he said. “He’s been visiting pretty often. We hang out.”

“You — _what_?”

“That’s a story for another day.” Sirius made a shooing motion. He felt sheepish now that he’d said it, and saw the blank shock on Harry’s face. “You don’t have much time. Don’t you have something you want to talk about?”

“Uh… Yeah.” Harry seemed to recall why he was here, though he still looked hesitant, as if he wanted to ask more about what Sirius had just told him. “It was… about my dad. You know, the things he did to — in that memory?”

And the shock and hesitance that had been in his godson’s face was replaced with a desperate uncertainty. Sirius felt his chest constrict at the sight.

“I know what he — what we did was horrible,” he said. He seemed to have become a magnet of sorts for difficult conversations; despite his experience with them, he still didn’t have any idea what to tell Harry.

“Was he like that?” said Harry, and he looked lost and fearful. “Was he always like that?”

“Not always,” Sirius said quickly. He had almost never talked about James after Azkaban. And this was even harder than he usually found it. “He was…”

He was at a loss for words. Back when Snape had confronted him about the memory, it had been himself and his own actions he had been focused on. He hadn’t thought about James almost at all. But he remembered James Scourgifying Snape’s mouth to choke him, lifting him up into the air upside down, the crowd cheering, and he couldn’t find anything he could say.

Harry was looking more and more upset. “Why did my mum marry him?” he said.

The utter misery in Harry’s voice made Sirius’s heart clench painfully. “She started going out with him in seventh year,” he said slowly.

“Why did she? She _hated_ him.”

Sirius paused. “She didn’t hate him,” he said, “not by seventh year anyway.”

“Was my dad like that?” Harry asked again. “Did he do what — what he did, a lot?”

“What you saw was… an extreme case,” said Sirius. “Most of the time it didn’t escalate like that.”

“He didn’t even have a reason for doing it,” said Harry, “did he?”

Sirius stared at him. There was an anger in Harry’s eyes now.

“No,” he said at last. “And I egged him on, as you saw. Sometimes I started it.”

Harry was silent for a moment. Sirius was utterly lost. He needed to tell him how good of a friend James had been, how happy he and Lily had been together, how committed James had been to fighting on the side of the Light — but all of it died on his lips. They fell flat, because what did any of that _matter_ , what did that matter when it came to what had happened by the lake that day.

Harry’s expression suddenly turned wary. “Is that… Kreacher, coming downstairs?” he asked.

Sirius listened. “No,” he said. “It must be somebody your end.”

Harry’s eyes widened in a panic. “Gotta go,” he said urgently. And he pulled out of the fire and out of sight.

Sirius stayed crouched in front of the fireplace for a few minutes, watching the fire flicker and die. He didn’t know what to feel.

\---

Later that day, Snape came over with Hogwarts food; shepherd’s pie again, at Sirius’s request. Sirius didn’t even wait until they’d reached the kitchen to start telling Snape about what had happened that day.

“He used the _Floo?_ ” Snape said, when Sirius had finished with the gist of it.

“Yeah,” said Sirius, feeling Snape was focusing on the completely wrong thing. “That’s not the point.”

“Not the point?” Snape looked furious. “Two students were expelled for causing trouble today. Well, not expelled, not exactly. But if Potter had been caught with his head in Umbridge’s fire —”

“Expelled?” Sirius said, as they started unpacking the food. “Why? Who?”

“The Weasley twins. They turned almost an entire floor into a swamp. Umbridge tried to have them whipped by Filch, but they Summoned their brooms and flew off.”

“So… they just _left?_ ”

“Yeah.” Snape laid down their plates. “Not coming back either, if what they yelled at her as they left is anything to go by.”

Sirius let out a shocked laugh.

“So,” said Snape, returning to his point, “if your godson had been caught talking to _you_ out of Umbridge’s fire… What lives in that mind of his, I can’t fathom.”

“Wouldn’t that mean… that he was that desperate to talk?” said Sirius. “When I asked him last year if he wanted me to go to Hogsmeade, to spend the day with him —”

“You did _what?_ ”

“— he said no. He does care about me not being carted off to Azkaban, so…” Sirius shrugged.

They didn’t talk for a moment as they ate. Sirius could tell Snape was still torn between telling him off for his behavior and being angry about Harry’s.

“So he asked you about the memory,” said Snape at last, his voice quieter.

“Well, yeah,” said Sirius. “He more so asked about… about James.”

He paused. Snape wordlessly gestured at him to continue.

"He asked me if… James did that a lot, if he was like that all the time. And… why Lily had gone out with him at all.”

He thought he caught Snape doing a small double take. After a moment, he said, “He was looking for reassurance, from you.”

“... Yeah.”

“Did you give it to him?”

“That’s the thing,” Sirius said, “I... didn’t. I didn’t know what to say. I knew he wanted me to say some reassuring things about his dad, and I’d always had good things to say about James, but… It felt too wrong, to do that.”

There was a pause. “Why?” said Snape.

“Because… Because nothing good I can say about him has anything to do with what happened.” His voice had risen slightly. _Please don’t say I did the wrong thing, I can’t live with myself._

Snape was gazing at him. After a long moment, he said, “You still love him.”

Sirius blinked. It sounded foreign, Snape using the word ‘love’. “Who? James?”

Snape nodded.

“I… yeah.” Sirius wondered where this was going, dreaded where he thought it might.

“You didn’t have anything to say to your godson because you didn’t come to terms with it yourself,” said Snape. He said it slowly, as if choosing his words. “Maybe if you do that, you’ll be able to talk about it more the next time you meet him.”

Sirius looked down at his plate. Stared at it for a moment. “How… how can I come to terms with it? I didn’t think about those things together. Or maybe I didn’t want to, I don’t know.” He looked back up at Snape and met his eyes. 

“I… Things have changed,” he said. “They’ve changed the way I think. And I haven’t quite gotten there yet, I suppose, so when Harry asked me about it, I… I blanked.”

Snape hesitated before talking. “It’s because of me.”

“I’m not saying it’s your _fault_ ,” said Sirius. “I don’t think that. I’m glad we made up, and that we talked about those things. I just…” He shook his head, sighed. “I suppose you’re right. I need time to think. It’s just that… He was my best friend, and we were so close, and since he died, I… I wanted to remember it all as something good.”

There was a strange expression on Snape’s face. He didn’t speak for a long moment; he almost looked like he was agonizing over something.

“What’s wrong?”

Snape looked up at him.

“Is it something I said?” said Sirius.

“I…” Snape gave a trembling sigh, and it scared him. “There’s something I didn’t… Well, I didn’t really have the chance —”

“What is it?”

It took painfully long for him to open his mouth again.

“About the Potters’ death,” he said quietly, “I never told you that… that I had a part in it.”

Sirius looked up at Snape. He was looking down at his fidgeting hands again; it was a habit of his, Sirius had discovered. “The reason the Dark Lord started tracking them down was because… I heard the prophecy and... I relayed it, to him, and he… thought it meant _them_.” He finished with a shuddering breath, keeping his eyes fixed on his hands.

Sirius thought for a moment.

“So it was true,” he said slowly, as if pondering.

Snape’s head snapped up; tears had welled in his eyes, and his expression was one of utter shock.

“You forget,” said Sirius. “I was in Azkaban, at the same time a lot of the Death Eaters were. I heard things. Half of them were mad ramblings anyway, but some of them would talk about how you weasled your way out of prison after giving Voldemort false information or something. I heard about Wormtail there, too, and that I knew I was true, so I’d wondered if the story about you was true as well.”

“You…” Snape’s eyes were wide. “You _knew?_ ”

“Sort of.” Sirius cracked a small smile; Snape looked at him like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Like I said, I didn’t know, more like heard.”

It was quiet for a moment. “And,” said Snape, sounding small, “and you’re not…” He trailed off.

“Mad? At you, about it?”

Snape nodded.

“I mean,” said Sirius. That _was_ strange, he thought, that even back when he’d hated Snape, the fact that he’d apparently caused Voldemort to hunt down the Potters hadn’t been included in his list of reasons. But then, it wasn’t strange at all in a way; he’d realized that just now.

“You didn’t know that the prophecy was about them,” he said. “Did you?”

“No,” said Snape, “but —”

“Then you made a mistake.” Sirius sighed. “Like I did. You know, thinking Wormtail would be a good Secret Keeper, he didn’t plant the idea in my head or anything, I suggested it first. And I suppose he jumped on it, a chance to prove himself.” 

He smiled wryly. “It’s my fault in a way, as well. If you’re going to look at it like that.”

“That’s…” Snape seemed to be struggling to take in what Sirius was saying. “So, you’re saying — that —”

“A lot of people had a hand in it,” said Sirius. “Me, you. Dumbledore, even.” He paused. 

“And you regret it.” It wasn’t a question.

Snape nodded. “It’s what made me switch sides,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.

Sirius digested that. Thought of the constant danger Snape was in these days. Of everything he was sacrificing.

“Then it was a mistake, and you did the best you could to make amends,” he said. “It can just be that.”

Snape stared at him.

“I’d thought,” he said slowly, after a moment, “I was walking into another falling out.”

“Sorry to disappoint.” He smiled again, almost in spite of himself. Then he saw tears welling in Snape’s eyes again.

“Hey.”

He mirrored the way Snape had made his way to him, that day he had first sobbed his eyes out in front of him. He walked around the table and sat down in a chair next to him.

“Hey,” he said again. Snape didn’t say a word. Just sat there, almost completely still, tears now making their way down his face in streaks and his mouth tightly shut. Sirius reached out for him, and without thinking, he moved to wrap his arms around Snape’s torso.

Snape froze slightly when he realized what Sirius was doing. He could feel Snape’s irregular breathing and the body trembling through the fabric of his robes. Snape stayed upright and rigid for a few moments, breaths coming in gasps that were bitten back — then he gave in, folded into Sirius, and Sirius held on tight. His fingers grabbed the back of Snape’s coarse robes, and he settled his head on Snape’s shoulder. Closed his eyes.

Neither of them said a word. They didn’t need to.

\---

Start of term meant longer naps for him, as Snape no longer came around until after classes were over. He slept longer into the day and woke when the sun had tipped its way into early evening. And in turn, he started staying up later at night than he used to.

At least he’d gotten some cleaning done, he supposed. The night he and Snape had shared their first hug, Snape had left past midnight. They hadn’t said anything much, just made their way up to the sitting room and sat in a large chair side by side, existing together in companionable silence. At the door, he’d remembered to ask Snape to bring over some doxycide if he could.

“There are doxies in the house?” Snape had said. It had taken a while for him to calm down, and there was still a redness in his eyes. Still, he had recovered enough to sound sufficiently disgusted.

“Yeah,” said Sirius, sighing. “I’d thought we’d gotten rid of them last summer and this Christmas, but they’ve come back somehow.”

“They’d do that.”

Snape had agreed to bring it over, and the next day he’d brought along the promised doxycide, along with several other things that might help with the cleaning. Sirius thought the flying duster was particularly brilliant; he could just sit back and watch it zoom around the room with its accompanying dustpan, doing the work for him.

On Mondays, Sirius asked after Harry’s Occlumency, but on the first Monday after the Floo incident, Snape told him they needed to talk about it before he had even opened his mouth.

“He’s been practising,” Snape said, in a tone that one might use when worried they were going mad.

“He has?”

“Yeah. He still, well, he hasn’t improved much, but I can tell he’s been.”

Sirius had a suspicion it might have to do with Harry’s talk with him a few days prior. He could tell Snape was thinking the same thing.

“That’s a good thing, then,” he said. He was relieved.

“Mm.” Snape paused. “He’s also been keeping his head down in Potions more. And he… looks at me in a funny way, like… like he’s trying to figure something out. Doesn’t respond to negative remarks the same way he used to, either; he’s much more subdued overall. I wonder if something’s wrong.”

Sirius suddenly remembered telling Harry about how he and Snape were on good terms now. Snape didn’t know Harry knew that yet; he’d forgotten about saying that altogether. But he was sure that was the reason for Harry’s different behaviour.

“That time Harry came here through the Floo,” he said, “I forgot to tell you something —”

And he relayed what he’d told Harry to Snape, straining to remember exactly what he’d said. 

“You told him we were on good terms?” Snape repeated, after he’d finished repeating what he’d said to the best of his ability.

“Mm-hm.”

“And he believed that?”

“He must have,” said Sirius, starting to grin, “if he’s listening to you and practicing all of a sudden.”

Snape frowned. “That’s the reason he’s finally putting in work, is it?” he said. He sounded pleased and annoyed at the same time. “If I’d known it was that easy, I would’ve asked you to be in his ear about it sooner.”

“How can I be in his ear about it?” said Sirius. “There’s no way I can reach him. The Floo network’s out, I can’t leave the house…” He trailed off. He’d just remembered something; it had completely left his mind.

“What?” said Snape.

“I… I do have a way to talk to him,” said Sirius.

Snape squinted at him.

“It’s not risky or anything,” Sirius added quickly. “It’s — well, it’s what I used for when I needed to communicate with James back at Hogwarts.”

He explained the way the mirrors worked, as Snape’s eyebrows steadily travelled up his forehead.

“Then why did he use the Floo to talk to you, if that exists?” said Snape.

Sirius paused. He remembered his old uncertainty over whether Harry actually wanted to talk to him or not. _But he wanted to hear what you had to say about James. Doesn’t that count for something, at least?_

“He hasn’t called me through it yet,” Sirius admitted. “When I gave him the package, just after Christmas, I didn’t tell him exactly what it was, and…”

“Maybe he hasn’t opened it yet?” Snape suggested.

“Maybe,” Sirius sighed.

“If you want,” said Snape slowly, after a moment, “I could… tell him to open it, if he hasn’t.”

Sirius’s eyes widened. “You could?”

“Not like he doesn’t know about us anyway,” said Snape, shrugging. “I’ll find a way to tell him, if you’d like.”

“Yeah.” A laugh escaped him, breathless and grateful. “Yeah, I’d like that. Thanks.”

The next day, he woke up late again, and changed sleepily. As he made to open his bedroom door, he remembered something. He turned and searched through his possessions until he found the small mirror. _Just in case_ , he told himself, ignoring the ache that spread through him.

A few hours later, Harry called.

\---

“Merlin, I remember that time of year. D’you remember that Hufflepuff bloke in our year who got a really bad chronic nosebleed?”

The fifth years’ O.W.L.’s were approaching fast, and Snape was getting steadily more stressed. “They’re nowhere near ready,” was the reason he’d given Sirius.

"Summersby, wasn’t it?” Snape squinted at the fruit he was holding. 

“Yeah. _Yeah_ , I think it was.”

“I only knew about it because he started missing classes all of a sudden. He used to be like Hermione Granger.”

“He first got a bad case of it during herbology with us,” said Sirius. “Started bleeding all over the Venomous Tentacula.”

Snape winced. “That couldn’t have gone well.”

“No.” Sirius leaned over for another slice. “Gave Sprout a good reason to talk us through safety precautions again, though. Oh,” he added as an afterthought, “Harry told me a couple of kids in their year have already got a bad case of exam sickness.”

Harry had been calling regularly through the mirror. He wasn’t able to talk for very long, but each time they were able to talk about how the day had been. Harry didn’t ask him much about Snape; Sirius reckoned he was still figuring it out. He hadn’t asked about James again yet, either, and for that Sirius was grateful. He promised himself he would tell Harry as soon as he had thought it through himself, though he had a feeling it wouldn’t be any time soon.

Snape had been bringing papers to grade; there were more and more piling up each day. He had shown Sirius a grade marking quill where one could write in in the requirements and it would scribble out individual papers’ grades for you.

“I’d always wondered how teachers managed to grade mountains of homework every day,” said Sirius, watching the quill zigzagging down the page, as if someone holding it was tracing the tip of it over the lines of the essay as they read.

“This shortens the process for us, for sure,” Snape said, pulling out a second quill to grade another stack of essays. “So we have time to do other things. And it writes in my handwriting, so it doesn’t feel artificial either.”

“That’s sneaky,” said Sirius, smirking.

“Everyone does it.”

“Exactly,” Sirius pointed a finger at Snape. “I thought teachers were reading through my essays before grading them — we’ve all been tricked.”

“I do read the ones with the highest and lowest scores,” said Snape. “That way I can get an idea.”

Sirius was immensely grateful for the grading quill, as he didn’t have to sit in silence watching Snape scribble D’s on top of parchments. They talked and drank tea and watched the quills doing their jobs.

As they walked to the door that night, Snape with a large bundle of essays he’d finished grading under his arm, it occurred to Sirius that despite Snape staying late, they’d never had the chance to have drinks together. He knew it wasn’t the time now, what with important exams coming, but he supposed he could ask Snape about drinks after they were over. At least then he’d have something to look forward to.

“Severus,” he called. Then he realized what he’d said, and snapped his mouth shut.

Snape turned back to him, his eyes wide.

“Er,” said Sirius. “I just wanted to ask — would you like to have drinks again once the O.W.L.’s are over?”

Snape still looked a bit dumbstruck. “I — yes,” he said. But he didn’t turn back to the door.

It was then that it suddenly struck Sirius just how idiotic they were being. They had cleared up all their past grudges, had become _drinking buddies_ ; Merlin knows how that happened, but they probably ought to have moved past this stage by now. He supposed now was as good a time as any. And he’d always been the more daring one between the two of them.

“See you tomorrow then,” he paused, “Severus.”

Snape — Severus — stood there for another moment. “Right,” he said. He sounded shocked, and he slowly turned back to the door. Just as he had stepped halfway out of the house, he added, in a voice so quiet Sirius just managed to hear him, “Sirius,” before darting out and slamming the door shut behind him.

That night, Sirius didn’t stop grinning until he fell asleep.

\---

They eased into calling each other by first name faster than Sirius had thought they would. _If only the O.W.L.’s would pass just as fast,_ Sirius thought. Severus didn’t talk about them much, but he could tell he was still stressed about them.

“Tell me about the examiners,” he’d said, when he heard they had arrived. “Is old Marchbanks still on?”

“Yeah,” said Severus. “You remember the examiners from when we were at school? I can’t remember anyone.”

Sirius tapped the side of his head pointedly with his finger. They sniggered.

When O.W.L.’s finally started the next day, Severus came around looking distinctly less stressed out than he had been for the past couple of weeks.

“I don’t have to do anything for a while,” he said. “Well,” he corrected himself, “I still have to do work for the six other years, but compared to what I had to deal with recently that’s nothing.”

When Sirius raised his eyebrows and gestured towards the lower cabinets, Severus laughed.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s still a school night.”

“That excuse has lost all credibility,” said Sirius, grinning. “You’ve crossed that line already, there’s no going back.”

They had drinks that night, and Sirius was comfortable enough to get a little drunk. Severus was much more careful, and at one point he hit Sirius on the arm to stop him from laughing so much. It didn’t work.

\---

The next Wednesday, Severus left earlier than he had done for the past week and a half.

“It’s over tomorrow,” he said. “Finally. And I can bemoan my students’ terrible grades while relaxing at the same time.”

After seeing Severus out, Sirius thought he’d go up to bed early for the first time in a while, and he lay down in bed, listening to the occasional sounds of cars or people on the street below.

It was harder to fall asleep than he had expected, considering the fact that he was very tired. He turned over multiple times, trying to fall asleep and failing. This turned out to be a good thing, as around midnight, he heard the front door open and close, and Severus’s voice downstairs calling his name.

He bolted upright in bed. “I’m in my room,” he called loudly. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

He changed quickly and ran out of his room and down the stairs.

“Did something happen?” he said urgently, as soon as he spotted Severus on the lower landing.

“Yeah,” said Severus. Up close, he looked like he’d just gone through a shock. “At Hogwarts. Your godson’s safe,” he added quickly.

“Right,” said Sirius. “What is it, then?”

Severus paused. “During the Astronomy practical exam just now,” he said, sounding like he couldn’t fully believe what he was about to say, “Umbridge and five other people cornered Hagrid in front of his hut. They tried to Stun him, and then Minerva McGonagall came out of the castle to confront them."

The hollow tone of Severus's voice perfectly mirrored how Sirius was starting to feel. He sensed a cold, roiling foreboding that was spreading its way up, starting in the pit of his stomach.

Severus's voice grew lower, as if he was trying to hold his emotions in. "They hit her with four or five Stunning spells at once, and she was knocked out. She’s to be moved to St. Mungo’s, and Hagrid’s on the run now," he finished.

They stared at each other. Sirius was silent for a few seconds. “ _What?_ ” he spluttered at last.

“I know.” Severus looked shaken. “I just came to tell you. Thought you should know.”

“Is McGonagall going to be alright?”

“Poppy said she couldn’t be sure.” Severus sounded worried and shaken.

Fear and anger was bubbling up inside him. “What — why did — _how_ can they do that?”

Severus shook his head. “I’ve just been to the hospital wing where I heard about it. You know Hagrid was on probation and everything, and how much Umbridge hates half-breeds —”

Sirius nodded.

“— and I think she was trying to get him to resign or something. Didn’t expect him to resist it, I expect.” 

He scoffed, then sighed. “She probably won’t even get penalized for this. Everyone left in the Ministry who’s high up is in Fudge’s pocket some way or another.”

“You know,” said Sirius, “Harry once asked me at the start of term if I thought Umbridge might be a Death Eater. I told him I didn’t back then, but now I think about it that just might be plausible.”

“She really is plucking off Order members for them,” said Severus. “Two at once, this time.”

They didn’t have much to say to each other after that. They stood in the hall for a while, as Sirius turned over what he’d heard in his head. Umbridge had really gained absolute power over Hogwarts, if she wasn’t facing any penalties for attacking a staff member with backup nearing midnight. What he’d just heard was worlds apart from the Hogwarts he’d known, even the Hogwarts he’d visited two years previously.

After a few minutes, Severus sighed again. “I’d best head back out now.”

“Yeah.” They walked to the door together. “Take care, Severus,” he said, as they stepped outside. “The last thing we need is you having to run for it as well.”

Severus grimaced. “I’ll try my best. And I’ll watch after your godson,” he added.

“Thanks,” said Sirius, smiling despite everything. He had never been more fearful for his godson, but never so reassured of his safety either.

Severus squinted pointedly at his smile. “Don’t give him any ideas.”

“What do you take me for?” Sirius laid a hand over his chest in mock indignance. It made Severus chuckle. That was one thing he could feel good about tonight, at least.

\---

Despite his efforts to get to bed early, Sirius woke up late (it was nearing two in the evening) and feeling groggy on top of it. The news he’d heard the night before was still weighing on his mind. He sat up in bed and shook his head to clear it, then opened the window a little to let the morning air in.

He supposed he could just go back to sleep, as he wasn’t feeling all that hungry. He decided he’d clean his bedroom up again a bit, and go to bed again. He had just finished changing his sheets and started to lie back down again when he heard a voice call, “Sirius?” from next to him.

It was Harry.

“Harry,” Sirius called, jumping out of bed and grabbing the mirror off his bedside cabinet.

“Sirius,” exclaimed Harry. “Where are you? Are you at your house?”

“Yeah,” he said, bewildered. Harry sounded urgent and panicked. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

He thought he heard someone’s voice saying in the background, “Oh thank Merlin.”

“What’s going on?” he said.

“I —” Harry was cut off, and Hermione appeared in the mirror’s frame.

“Harry had a — a vision, in the middle of the History of Magic exam,” she said quickly. “He saw you at the Ministry, being… being tortured by Voldemort.”

“What?” Sirius’s eyes were wide. “I haven’t left the house since Christmas. I’ve been in bed until just now.”

“Thank Merlin,” the same voice said again. Hermione was still frowning.

“I’m sorry, Sirius, but could we check? Ask questions to see if it’s really you?”

“Yeah,” said Sirius. “Go ahead.” His mind was still reeling.

“Okay. Um, right, okay. What did you give Harry this Christmas?” she said.

“A set of advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts books,” said Sirius immediately. “Me and Remus got them together,” he added.

“And... and what about Christmas two years ago?”

Sirius almost grinned in spite of himself. “The Firebolt.”

“Okay,” said Hermione, looking profoundly relieved. “I think it’s him," she said, apparently to the room she was in at large.

She quickly handed the mirror back to Harry, whose face came into Sirius’s vision again.

“Harry,” said Sirius, “this means someone planted that vision inside your head, to make you think I was in danger. Possibly to lure you to the Ministry.”

The thought chilled him to the bone. Harry looked like a thousand thoughts were racing through his head, each more daunting and frightful than the next. 

“What should I do?” His voice was small and fearful, and Sirius felt a surge of something rise up inside him.

“We should alert the Order.”

“But McGonagall’s gone to St. Mungo’s,” said Harry, voice rising again. “And Hagrid’s gone too!”

“Severus is still left,” said Sirius, fighting to keep his voice calm, to keep his thoughts as rational and quick as he could. He saw Harry’s eyes widen, and knew he must have forgotten about Severus; then he realized it could just be because he’d called him by his first name.

“Go to him and tell him exactly what happened," he said. "We need to alert the Order. Voldemort is probably — go, just go quickly, now.”

“I’ll go with you,” said the same voice from the background, and Sirius saw Ron’s red hair appear behind Harry.

“I’ll take the mirror,” said Hermione. “In case Umbridge spots you with it and confiscates it or something.”

Harry handed the mirror over, and he and Ron disappeared from view.

“Sirius, we were so _worried_.” Hermione’s voice was trembling slightly in her apparent relief, and there were tears in her eyes.

“I’m fine,” he said. “But I can’t do anything, stuck here. Thank Merlin for the mirror,” he added, echoing Ron from earlier.

“Could you tell me how the mirror works?” said Hermione. “So we could keep you updated?”

Sirius explained it to her. “Good luck,” he said, “and be careful.”

“See you soon, Sirius,” said Hermione.

He turned the mirror off and sat down on the edge of his bed, all trace of sleepiness gone. He ran his fingers through his hair, then got up and got changed to go downstairs.

In less than fifteen minutes, almost ten Order members had congregated in the front hall.

“Arthur might be able to meet us at the Ministry as well,” said Kingsley. “The Department of Mysteries… This’ll be dangerous.”

“We’re ready,” said Tonks, and the others nodded. “It’s the Hall of Prophecy, right?”

“Yes,” Kingsley said. “We’re expecting Death Eaters, maybe even Voldemort himself.”

There was a small pause. Then Kingsley gestured them forwards. Sirius watched them all go.

A few minutes afterwards, Severus called through the mirror to make sure he was still in Grimmauld Place. Sirius had to show him the interior walls by turning the mirror from side to side for him to be satisfied. He then told him that he was keeping Harry and five of his friends in his office, under the guise of a detention.

“I can’t know what’s happening at the Ministry any better than you can,” he said. “I have to stay here. I’ll let you know if I hear of anything.”

After the call had ended, he sunk into a chair, feeling exhausted and alert at the same time. It was then that he heard that the click-clacking noises were louder than usual, coming from Buckbeak’s large room upstairs.

As he made his way up, his wand out and a daunting feeling creeping up his spine, he ran into Kreacher, who was coming downstairs. It had been a long time since he'd seen the elf around the house at all, he realized. Kreacher's hands were heavily bandaged. When he locked eyes with Sirius, a look of terror crossed his face.

\---

Sirius heard of the fight at the Ministry mainly from Tonks, who was rather eager to share, even though she had broken several bones from it. Her storytelling was rather jumbled, and he had to strain a little to catch the gist. 

From what he gathered, the Death Eaters had been expecting Harry to appear, and the Order had managed to successfully ambush them, catching them off guard. All of the Death Eaters except for Antonin Dolohov had been captured and sent to Azkaban; Dolohov had been killed by a rebounding Killing Curse.

“Though Azkaban won’t be much use anyway,” growled Mad-Eye from next to them. “There’s nothing to stop another mass breakout.”

“At least they’re there for the time being,” said Kingsley. “It’s better than nothing.”

They were waiting for Dumbledore’s return from Hogwarts. Reinstated as headmaster, he’d gone to kick Umbridge out (though Sirius supposed the old man himself would put it more delicately) and see to urgent affairs before gathering them for a meeting.

Order members were slumped in their seats, looking exhausted. Sirius himself felt rather wrung out, even though he hadn’t even moved around all that much.

After he had run into Kreacher, he had ordered him to explain what he had been doing, why there were bandages on his hands. After Kreacher’s tale was over, he had expressly forbidden the elf from moving from that spot, furious and shaken to his core, and ran upstairs to find Buckbeak pacing, panicking, and injured. He had tended to his wounds before going back downstairs to wait for the Order to arrive again.

Dumbledore arrived some thirty minutes later; Sirius nudged Tonks awake. Severus had arrived in tow, and Sirius made a beeline for him. When he reached him, without hesitation he pulled him into a tight hug. Severus responded after a moment, wrapping his arms around him and patting him lightly on the back.

When they pulled apart, he saw most of the Order staring at them in blank shock, though they looked away hastily. Both of them made their way to the back of the table. They sat side by side.

They talked of the war, which was now definitely looming close. Because the Ministry had acknowledged Voldemort's return, said Dumbledore, the news would most likely be printed out for Wizarding Britain to read at last. For the time being, they needed to focus on strengthening their efforts on recruiting new members for the Order and urging the Ministry to alert people of safety measures as soon as possible.

"Voldemort will waste no time lingering now that he's out in the open," Dumbledore said. "We mustn't let any time go to waste from this moment onwards."

After the meeting ended, a chatter started up. Despite war being on the horizon, as they all had dreaded for so long, just the fact that they’d rounded the Death Eaters up, had gotten Dumbledore back, and finally managed to convince the Ministry of Voldemort’s return seemed to have cheered everyone up immensely. Severus remained seated alongside Sirius, watching everyone move out of the kitchen.

When the chatter died down, they sat in comfortable, if exhausted, silence for a few minutes. Then Severus said, “I’m worn out.”

“Me too.” Sirius stretched. “Thanks,” he added, “for everything.”

“Don’t thank me,” said Severus. Then, “Your godson’s been looking at me funny.”

“Funny? Like how?”

“Like he’s… Like he’s just now _seeing_ me, or something.” Severus looked embarrassed saying that, and Sirius laughed.

“Did you say anything to each other?”

“Nothing much,” said Severus. “I told him not to beat himself up for what happened. Nothing bad happened anyway, and he was clever to call you and check — though that was probably Hermione Granger’s idea,” he added as an afterthought.

“Merlin’s pants, give my godson some credit.”

Severus laughed, then yawned so hugely it looked painful. “I don’t want to go back to Hogwarts today,” he said.

“You could stay the night tonight, if you want.” They had never done that before, but somehow it didn’t seem awkward at all to suggest.

“I think I might, yeah,” said Severus after a moment. “Is there a — of course there’s a spare room, what am I saying?”

“You’re too tired to think straight, that’s what it is,” Sirius chuckled. “Where do you live, by the way? During the summer?”

“My parents’ old home,” said Severus.

“Oh.”

“I hate it.”

“Oh.”

Sirius was silent for a moment. He had another suggestion in mind, though this one he found much harder to bring up. _"It's not as if I don't need a new house in any case,"_ came back to him.

He had found out today that he needn't be alone anymore; he had discussed his trial with Kingsley a few minutes before the meeting. And when Severus had walked into the kitchen just under an hour ago, he'd realized that for the past few months, he hadn't been alone at all. He tried to find the right words to say. To suggest something that would let him keep things the same — something he didn't remember ever wanting once since Azkaban.

“Severus.” The name rolled comfortably off his tongue as though he’d been saying it for years.

Severus smiled slightly; Sirius had noticed he did that whenever he said his name. “What?” he said.

“If you’d like to, would you — would you like to stay here?”

Severus blinked. “I thought we already agreed on me staying the night.”

“No, I mean,” Sirius paused. He felt as awkward and uncertain as he had two years ago, when he had first asked Harry the same question. “I meant, would you like to… stay? As in… long-term?”

Severus looked at him. Sirius was much better at parsing out the emotions in his eyes now.

“You’re asking me to live here.”

“Not if — not if you don’t want — it’s just —”

Severus held up a hand and he quietened. “I’m… not sure,” Severus started after a moment, “I’ve never moved anywhere, so…"

He paused, and took in a breath. Then he said, "But... I’d like to.”

“You would?”

“Yeah.” Severus’s face broke into a tentative sort of smile, and Sirius felt his heart soar. “I would.”

\---

“Nice.”

“It’s not nice. It’s not even close to nice.”

A pair of Exploding Snap cards had just blown up in Severus’s face, and Sirius had nearly toppled over in his chair from laughing so much.

“You find such joy in my pain, it’s troubling,” Severus grumbled as he fumbled for his wand.

“Here,” Sirius chortled as he pulled out his own wand and pointed it at Severus’s face. “I can see where it got you better.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“Smart,” said Sirius. He siphoned off most of the ash on Severus’s nose and eyebrows. “Too bad I already got to it, then.” 

They were in a corner of the sitting room. Order members had filtered in and out throughout the day, but now they were alone. It was nearing midnight.

“We should get to bed, shouldn’t we?” Sirius said, yawning and checking the clock on the side of the wall.

“Funny you want to do that as soon as _I’m_ the one losing.” Severus stretched like a cat and flicked his wand to put the cards back inside the beat-up paper pack. “How about we continue this thing tomorrow?”

“No, you sore loser,” Sirius laughed.

“This game is rigged. You rigged it.”

They kept it up until they’d reached the second floor landing, where they bade each other goodnight and went to their separate rooms. As he changed for bed, Sirius heard Severus moving around in his room. Smiled to himself.

Soon there would be summer, and Harry would come and stay for longer than he previously had. They’d be unencumbered by Dementor attacks or Ministry hearings or the lies of the Daily Prophet, though Harry might still be thoroughly stressed out due to the Occlumency lessons planned throughout the break.

Sirius’s trial — the one he hadn’t gotten fifteen years ago — was scheduled for next week. There would be no more wanted posters of him in the streets. He would be able to roam the streets, maybe actually go out for lunch and dinner with Severus and Harry, order his food himself.

He had always imagined that, even if he ever became a free man again, he wouldn’t feel like it. The past that had weighed on him for years and years had been so heavy that he had thought he would never be able to shake it off. But this summer, there would be long talks in the shades of trees, more crying, perhaps, and more laughter, definitely. They would work together to shatter the small universes they had built for themselves. And they might build a new one together. Perhaps they had already started.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would love to hear your thoughts if you'd like to leave a comment, and if you liked this fic, leaving a kudos will brighten my day <3
> 
> Thank you for reading!! Much love


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